Daily Caller: Coburn: Fire Federal Employees Who Are ‘Paid to do Nothing’
Coburn: Fire federal employees who are ‘paid to do nothing’
Posted By Caroline May
03/27/2013
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, says that federal employees who don’t do their jobs should be laid off before critical employees like food inspectors and air traffic controllers are furloughed due to sequestration.
In the most recent installment of his letter writing campaign to government agencies offering suggestions for managing the sequester, Coburn pointed out the man-hours the government loses to employees who do not show up to work, who are paid to perform work unrelated to their agency’s mission, who are paid while on “stand by,” and those who are not working at all.
“Targeting these four areas where federal employees are being paid to do nothing could result in billions of dollars in annual savings, enough to maintain those employees performing the truly essential missions of the federal government,” Coburn said in a statement.
In a letter to Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry on Wednesday, Coburn cited a report he released in 2008, which showed that that between 2001 and 2007 the government lost 19.6 million hours to employees who were absent without leave.