Coburn Continues Sequester Crusade
Coburn to IRS: Find savings without furloughs
By Bernie Becker 03/13/13
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pressing the Treasury Department to cut waste in the face of the sequester instead of furloughing employees.
Coburn said Wednesday that, instead of furloughs, the agency could roll back travel costs, hire fewer employees and even work with the Obama administration to suspend pay for federal employees who are late on their taxes.
“While the IRS is furloughing the very workers who provide assistance to Americans paying taxes, the agency is failing to collect millions of dollars in taxes owed by federal employees, wasting more sending officials to conferences around the country, and subsidizing the export of American jobs along with the taxes they generate,” Coburn wrote to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
Coburn has sent a slew of letters to federal officials in recent weeks, detailing how agencies can better manage the automatic sequester cuts. The $85 billion in cuts, to be implemented over seven months, started going into effect at the start of March.