Blame IRS Inaction on Budget Cuts

Pam Olson, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, on a public relations jaunt to California, assures that she’s cracking down on tax cheaters, particularly those who use offshore banks and trusts to avoid paying taxes (“Tax Policy Official Is Cracking the Whip,” Personal Finance, Feb. 2).

Why has the IRS “talked tough” before without following through on such cheating?

Her answer: Budget cuts that reduced the IRS staff by one-third over recent years have made enforcement “difficult.”

By now this is a familiar ploy of free-market Republican administrations: Promote and take credit for needed reforms, but cripple their enforcement through budget cuts. Then blame the regulators (“bureaucracy”) for incompetence.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich, flush with power as new House majority leader, openly assured his true-believer followers that he planned to kill or cripple all kinds of federal programs and watchdog agencies simply by having the House “de-fund” them -- an action the House can take on its own.

The Bush administration is rapidly turning this old-fashioned hypocrisy into a science at the SEC, FCC, FDA and the IRS. We haven’t seen anything yet.

June Maguire

Mission Viejo