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Washington, D.C.—The Bush administration’s proposed fiscal 2002 budget for key agencies of the Treasury Department, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Customs Service, is not only inadequate for current operations but reflects “a lack of commitment” to seeing that these agencies have sufficient resources over the long term, the president of the union representing most Treasury employees said today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) offered that assessment in testimony submitted today to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government.

In reviewing budget proposals and funding needs for half-a-dozen Treasury agencies, Kelley said neither the president nor Congress can expect the government to deliver the services the American people need and want unless adequate funding is provided “to retain the current workforce, recruit additional employees and give these employees the equipment and training they need to improve the efficiency of their work.” In particular, the NTEU leader said, federal pay and benefits should be, “at a minimum, on par with those in the private sector.”

She focused her testimony in some detail on both the IRS, where NTEU represents some 97,000 employees, and Customs, where the union is the collective bargaining representative for 12,000 employees.

The proposal for the IRS, she said, “indicates that this administration is not willing to make the long-term commitment necessary to modernize the IRS, nor is it willing to provide the agency with even a reasonable fraction of what is required to carry out its mission.”

She was particularly critical of the failure of the administration to recognize the need in the IRS for funding not just to carry out its current responsibilities—including the hiring of additional personnel—but the need for substantially more resources to continue the modernization and reorganization mandated by Congress.

“Without a long-term commitment to provide adequate funding,” she said, “the IRS will be forced to shuffle resources from one account to another, with the result being an IRS less responsive to the needs of the American people.”

Likewise, Kelley was sharply critical of the fiscal 2002 funding proposal for Customs, which she called “woefully inadequate” to meet the increasing needs of the nation’s front-line border control agency—including a pressing need for additional staff at both the southwest and northern borders.

“It’s very clear that funding must be increased to allow Customs to meet the challenges” associated with rapid increases in trade and passenger traffic, as well as in its law enforcement duties, both today and into the future, she said. “Congress must lead by example” in providing sufficient resources, she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments, including within Treasury the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Bureau of the Public Debt/Savings Bond Marketing Office, and the Financial Management Service.