OK, not quite—but not too far off, either:
We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
As in, 1,000 times one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along—unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office.
Read the rest of Andrew Malcolm’s piece for the gory details. Granted, $1 billion is a small percentage of the deficit we’re running these days, but that’s still a lot of money—and a lot of hypocrisy.
Looking at this, I can’t help thinking that one big place to start reining in spending is the federal payroll. If you were to downsize all non-military federal departments, agencies, etc. (excluding specific cases like the membership of Congress and the Supreme Court) by 10% at every level, then cut salary and benefits of all non-military federal employees who make more than, let’s say, 200% of the poverty line by 10%, I wonder how much that would save? (I exclude the military because they’ve been dealing with cutbacks while the rest of the federal government has not.)