THE REPULSIVE FACE OF THE FED BUREAUCRACY

There was an "audible gasp" from spectators when Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen told the House Ways & Means Committee the hard drive on Lois Lerner’s computer had been destroyed.

The IRS broke the law when it targeted conservative groups; broke it again when it leaked confidential tax information; broke it a third time when it destroyed evidence.

Mr. Koskinen wouldn’t apologize for the lost emails; for not informing Congress for months afterward; for giving misleading testimony in March.

He was "arrogant," did "a terrible job," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

He is "as smug and imperious as any bureaucrat you will meet," said the New York Post.

"It’s all there – the arrogance, the wealth, the air of privilege," said Rosslyn Smith, who blogs at the American Thinker. "He has the makings of a great Bond villain."

The federal bureaucracy has a face.  And it’s really repulsive.

Along with the IRS, nowhere is the belief they can lie to Congress, break the law with impunity more pervasive than in the Veterans Administration, where delayed or inadequate care may have contributed to the deaths of more than 1,000 vets.

Managers at nearly 75 percent of VA medical facilities concealed long wait times and patient deaths, the Inspector General found. They routinely retaliate against whistleblowers, the New York Times reported.

"Overpaid, lazy, surly" employees treat vets as a "nuisance," charged a former Special Forces medic.

Drew Griffin’s report on secret waiting lists in Phoenix shined a spotlight on the VA’s dysfunction.

 "I don’t know how you fix this…other than I would throw out every senior manager in the VA," the CNN reporter said.

Just 11,668 of 2.1 million federal employees (0.55 percent) were "separated for cause" in FY 2011, according to an analysis by USA Today. Which may have been unusually high. Just one federal civilian worker in 5,000 was fired for poor performance in 2001, according to a CATO Institute study.

Big shots almost never are fired, USA Today found. Just 0.18 percent of those making more than $100,000 were let go for cause. Only 27 of 35,000 government lawyers (0.00077 percent) got the axe.

Sitting down?  59,297 VA employees make $100,000 a year or more, while 18,709 rip the taxpayers off for a yearly salary of $180,000 or more.

Nearly half a million bureaucrats have six figure salaries. Federal workers have pay and benefits 74 percent higher than private sector workers, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

Bureaucrats can count on raises even if they performed poorly (nearly all VA managers qualified for bonuses), and no matter what economic conditions are (between 2008 and 2011, the median income of federal employees increased 36 times more than did the median income of Americans as a whole.)

No wonder Mr. Koskinen is so smug!

Their big paychecks and extraordinary job security aren’t justified by performance. Dysfunction is the rule, not the exception.

Despite a $38.2 billion budget and 24,000 employees, the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t prevented thousands of children from crossing the border illegally. The NSA is better at spying on us than on our enemies.  I defy you to find anything else ever in the history of the world that’s been screwed up as badly as the Obamacare rollout.

Government serves well only those who work for it because the bureaucracy is unaccountable. "Public servants" act as if they’re our masters.  They certainly believe they are.  Just ask Mr. Koskinen.  Or anybody at the VA, or the EPA.

The idea behind creation of the Civil Service in 1883 was to hire and promote on merit. But when bonuses are handed out without regard for the quality of work; when federal employees have to be told not to defecate in the hallways, there isn’t much merit left in it.

No one wants to go back to the spoils system. But we must make it possible to implement Drew Griffin’s solution for the VA’s dysfunction – fire every senior manager in the entire VA system.  Then do the same for the IRS.

If consumers of government services had more options, the power of bureaucrats over the people they’re supposed to serve would be reduced. In the VA, for example, vets who’ve had to wait 30 days or more for treatment should be given a voucher to get the care they need elsewhere.

If citizens they’d harmed could sue both the agencies and the bureaucrats responsible, there’d be less negligence and lawbreaking. Let the Tea Partiers targeted by the IRS initiate RICO suits.

Government should be more transparent. Bureaucrats should obey the rules they impose on others.

Let’s wipe that smug smile off Mr. Koskinen’s face.  Do we have to wait until 2017 for President Cruz to do that for us?

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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