An IRS manager shirked her official duties to attend an Obama re-election rally in 2012, according to a statement issued Wednesday from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. According to the statement, the IRS employee canceled a site visit and disappeared for four hours:
OSC’s investigation confirmed allegations that the employee, while on official travel to perform site visits with her subordinates, canceled a site visit and asked a subordinate to drop her off at the location of a presidential candidate’s campaign rally.
The employee did not return to her place of duty for over four hours and did not request leave. OSC concluded that the employee attended the campaign rally and thus violated the Hatch Act’s prohibition against engaging in political activity while on duty.
Amazingly, the IRS employee gets to keep her job. As noted by Politico, OSC has announced the slap on the wrist given to the guilty IRS employee, a mere 14-day suspension:
“A supervisor at the Internal Revenue Service has received a 14-day suspension for ditching work in 2012 to attend a re-election rally for President Barack Obama. The IRS official’s actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law limiting politicking by government employees.”
The supervisor blatantly disobeyed the Hatch Act, which states that one must “not engage in political activity while on duty or in the workplace.” Not only did she defy a federal law that was meant to protect citizens from unelected bureaucrats engaging in partisan activities, but she also abused her power as a supervisor to instruct her subordinates in helping her shirk her duties.
The political engagement of an IRS manager at an Obama rally should be of no surprise. The IRS has a history of engaging in a left-partisan manner, even though it is supposed to be a politically neutral entity. During a three-year period of time that Lois Lerner was an IRS boss, only one conservative group was granted non-profit status.
Like Lerner, the IRS supervisor engaged in political activity on the taxpayers’ dime. She should be fired, not given a wrist slap. A 14 day suspension will not cure her negligence or defiance of her federal duties under the law. Breaking federal law does not result in a fourteen day suspension for most people, and the same should apply to the supervisor.