TOPICS
TOPICS
Treasury secretary cancels private debt collection program
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Thursday told Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, he will end the Internal Revenue Service's use of private debt collectors, according to Grassley.
The $410 billion fiscal 2009 omnibus appropriations bill cuts off funds for the program, even though it has bipartisan support from the likes of Grassley, and Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
The senators last week wrote Geithner and IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman that they believe not enough data is available to make "an informed decision ... about the program's long-term effectiveness" and that their two states stood to lose about 200 jobs if the program ended.
The program has come in for scathing criticism from the National Treasury Employees Union and the IRS' National Taxpayer Advocate. House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman John Lewis, D-Ga., Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and others introduced legislation last month to repeal its authority.
Grassley condemned the administration for killing the program, stating in a release: "The administration has decided that after spending nearly a trillion dollars in the stimulus bill to keep people working across the country, they are going to cut a program that provides jobs to hundreds of people during the middle of a recession, including 60 in Iowa."
COMMENTS
- Who in America wants to see Dog The Bounty Hunter going after poor american people who have lost their homes, health and jobs. I say this is not an issue the President or US Treasury needs to give priority at this time. If IRS needs to enforce a USCode let them go after the pension theives stealing babyboomers pension plans, especially their own OPM. The US Government owes me money right now caught up in errors of IRS own lack of enforcing their own Internal Revenue Code. GERALDINE Posted March 9, 2009 9:39 PM
- This just proves that some of the Senators could care less of trying to do the "right-thing" with our money, and more on how it makes them look vis-a-vis their constituents. We need folks in Washington that will put the Country first instead of their finances! Concerned taxpayer Posted March 9, 2009 9:21 PM
- This is one of the most sensible measures made relative to IRS collections in the last decade. What about the money the Governement owes to the American people tired up in pension plans IRS is required to enforce? Especially, the Employee's Plan Compliance Resolution System; a system where IRS is suppose to be dedicated to correcting so called "errors" of pension plan sponsors. Under OPM, IRS has allowed their pension laws to be misused and abused. Stealing the pension funds that rightfully entitled old and destitute former spouses of civil service retirees, OPM and other governemental agencies have allowed to go unchecked by IRS. And now the only penalty they'll probably face are years of taking their time to "self- correct". If they need to advance a collection program, IRS should begin to sweep around their own back door first and get our retirement funds to the American people who have been unjustly denied by OPM and other pension fund sponsors due to lack of oversight and amending the pension guidelines to conform to Congressional actions taken to protect the People. I say IRS should first be required to get the American people illegally denied pension fund monies back to the peolple first and foremost, then and only then should IRS have a right to pursue collections. GERALDINE Posted March 9, 2009 8:56 PM
