Happy Tax Day! It's not a day, of course, that many Americans are eager to celebrate. And it's not typically a day when IRS employees get a whole lot of love.
This is, after all, a group of people routinely vilified, and who perpetually remain the focus of fears of intrusive government. (The latest example: concerns that thousands of armed IRS agents will be dispatched to enforce the health care reform law.)
But none of this stopped Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne from venturing out this Tax Day with a full-throated defense of the IRS and its workforce.
The death of IRS employee Vernon Hunter in an attack on a federal building in Austin, Texas, in February has not drawn enough sustained attention and outrage, Dionne writes. Nor, he argues, do the other "committed federal employees" at the agency get due credit for their work. Dionne writes:
"Who are the men and women of the IRS? They are the people who collect the revenue that allows the government to finance our troops who are in harm's way, help our wounded warriors, pay Grandma's Medicare bills, cover the costs of keeping our food and drugs safe, and do so many of the other things the vast majority of us want our government to accomplish.
"Yes, if you support our troops, you have to support the work of the Internal Revenue Service."
As taxes come due, let's give the IRS some credit
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
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