The House financial services and general government appropriations bill would impose a one-year moratorium on new competitive sourcing activities. The provision is designed to halt competitive sourcing activities until the next administration has an opportunity to consider and implement its own workforce policies.
The bill provides $22.39 billion – including $12.6 billion for the Department of the Treasury, within which is $11.4 billion is for the IRS, a $304 million increase above fiscal 2008 levels and $37 million above the President’s request.
The increase includes more money than requested for taxpayer services and the IRS Taxpayer Advocate’s office. The taxpayer advocate has been a vocal critic of the IRS’s program using contractors to collect delinquent tax debt with the promise of up to 25 percent of what they can get.
However, the program has proved more costly than anticipated, as the agency itself has acknowledged. Still, the IRS wants to continue developing the capability, seeing value in being able to delegate cases to contractors it wouldn’t otherwise be able to pursue.
Unions such as the National Treasury Employees Union have been tenacious in drumming up opposition and advocating that the millions of dollars used to run the program should instead go to bolstering agency staff, and keeping tax collection in the agency in its entirety, seeing it as inherently governmental. Language in the spending bill would cut off funding for the program.
