EDITORIAL: Federal employees bag bonuses, despite incompetence and misconduct

If you're a federal employee, there's a good chance that incompetence and misconduct not only won't get you fired, it also won't stop you from collecting raises and bonuses.

Take a look at the Social Security Administration. According to a new audit by the agency's inspector, SSA awarded a total of $145,000 in bonuses to 240 employees who had previously been suspended for various forms of misconduct, including sleeping and drinking on the job, bringing weapons to work, certifying false evidence resulting in the issuance of a Social Security number, and sexual harassment.

The agency also paid an additional $82,000 in bonuses to hundreds of other workers who had received written reprimands, including more than $20,000 to employees who had accessed agency records without authorization.

The bonuses were paid in 2013, and there's no reason to believe anything has changed in the years since. SSA employees are protected by collective bargaining agreements, which include generous definitions of successful job performance and forgiving consequences for malfeasance.

These types of stories from Washington repeat year after year after year. And while the dollar amounts in this case are microscopic when compared with our $4 trillion federal budget, they are instructive in understanding the culture of the federal bureaucracy.

It shouldn't require an act of Congress to prevent bad employees from being rewarded, but lawmakers see few options other than proposing legislation to deal with the problem. Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., recently introduced the 2015 Stop Wasteful Bonuses Act, an updated version of their similar 2014 bill that calls for the withholding of bonuses from federal employees who are delinquent on their taxes or have committed documented misconduct. Former Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., introduced a similar bill in 2013 that would have barred individuals with seriously delinquent tax debts from being employed with the federal government. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has introduced similar legislation in the past, as well, but saw the latest version of his bill fail to pass the House in April.

Bills such as these — bills, it should be noted, that legislators continually fail to pass — have come about in the wake of repeated reports of incompetence and misconduct among federal employees. According to one such report released earlier this year by the IRS, federal employees collectively owe roughly $3.5 billion in unpaid taxes.

During this election season, when candidates tell us that Washington needs more of our money to prevent our nation from sinking like the Titanic, pause to think of all the ways they've squandered the money we've already given them. Unwarranted bonuses for unworthy federal employees are just the tip of iceberg.