It's Time to Pay Up!

The headline was sensational, to say the least: Hey Feds, It’s Time to Pay Up. The headline sure got my attention. Did it grab yours?

It seems that the Internal Revenue Service is trying to collect billions of dollars in late taxes from nearly half a million federal employees. Documents obtained by WTOP radio through the Freedom of Information Act show the federal employees and retirees did not pay more than $3.5 billion in taxes owed last year.

The agency with the most delinquent employees was the U.S. Postal Service. Nearly 4.2 percent of its 747,000 workers are delinquent. The Executive Office of the President, which includes the White House, has 58 employees who did not pay more than $319,000. More than 1,000 Capitol Hill workers are on the list. About 152,000 of the delinquent federal workers have entered into payment plans.

The IRS would not provide comparable data for the general population.

At first read, I wanted to get angry. How dare government workers, whose salaries are paid through my tax dollars, not pay their fair share in taxes? How dare they skip out on paying their bills? How dare they think they can get away with this?

That was my first reaction.

Then, I calmed down and began to think it through a little more. In my honest opinion (IMHO), this is nothing more than the national media once again trying to incite the people against a few delinquent American citizens who happen to work for the federal government. Take a quick look around your church, school, neighborhood—or heck, your own family. How many people do you know who owe back taxes? Well, I know that’s not a subject to talk about around our Wednesday night church suppers, but I guarantee you that dozens and dozens of people around us each day owe back taxes. Where’s the news media on that one? Where’s the search to see what the general population owes? The IRS won’t tell you? Why not go after them with the Freedom of Information Act? Why not wait to publish your story until you have ALL of the facts and not just the ones that make your point of embarrassing the people who work for our government? Why not tell us, if you want to be fair, how many government employees we currently have in America, and since you included retirees in that number, tell us how many retirees we have in our country. What percentage of current, former, and retired government employees are we talking about here? Maybe, if you did your homework, you might also tell us how many people in the news media are late on paying their taxes? That would be an interesting study!

I suppose if the news media waited until they had all of the facts and could compare apples to apples, then it probably wouldn’t be as good a story and wouldn’t sell as many papers or ads or influence as many people as their sensational headline did today.

I know we have problems in America. I’m not blind to that. However, I am becoming more and more convinced everyday that the leading problem in our country is a biased news media that thinks their actions are above review. I, for one, don’t hold them nearly as high in esteem as they probably think I do—or should!

Stories like this cause my opinion of the news media to drop even lower! You think the President and members of Congress score low in opinion polls? Let’s see where the national and local media rank. I am sure, it won’t be very high.

Let's see if they will ask that question!