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Washington, D.C.—The $1.01 trillion spending bill for fiscal year 2015 that won congressional approval will hurt taxpayers by cutting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding for the fifth consecutive year, the leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today.

Between fiscal years 2011 and 2014, Congress slashed IRS funding by nearly $850 million, forcing a long-term hiring freeze and the loss of 13,000 full-time employees. Under this final bill, the IRS’ cumulative budget reduction dating back to 2011 will be $1.2 billion. These cuts will be devastating to the IRS’ ability to accomplish its mission, but the original House-passed bill would have funded the IRS at an irresponsible $9.8 billion, a reduction of $1.5 billion below the current level and $2.6 billion below the administration’s request making it difficult to reach an adequate funding level.

The bottom line, said the NTEU president, is that the IRS will find it even more challenging to help millions of Americans who call the agency with tax questions. “The agency estimates that it will not be able to answer half the calls it gets during the upcoming filing season because of insufficient staff,” said Kelley.

She added: “This short-sighted decision by Congress to once more deprive the IRS of the necessary resources to do its job will hurt all taxpayers, particularly low-income Americans, minorities, disabled people and retirees on fixed incomes, who cannot afford to pay for private tax-preparation services. America deserves better.”

“An agency that is already under enormous financial pressure will find it even more challenging to crack down on tax fraud and collect the revenue that pays for vital programs and services and reduces the federal deficit,” Kelley said.

Though the spending bill averts a shutdown and keeps most of the government operating until Sept. 30, 2015, it will fund U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and its parent agency, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), only until Feb. 27, 2015. Opponents to the president’s actions on immigration pushed to limit the funding period for DHS in opposition to the White House policies.

“This will make it a lot harder for CBP employees to fulfill their missions,” President Kelley said. “A short-term budget of such limited scope will create fiscal uncertainty, thwart long-term planning and hurt employee morale even more at an agency that has been understaffed and underfunded for years.”

NTEU is grateful to Sen. Barbara Milkulski (D-Md.) for her leadership in ensuring that a federal pay raise was included in the bill, particularly when considering federal pay was frozen for the last three out of four years.

The NTEU leader said it is important that the spending bill locks in a pay raise for federal employees, but added that a 1 percent pay raise is too small of an increase to help federal workers keep pace with their private sector counterparts.

“We pressed for reasonable increases and will continue to advocate for pay raises that keep federal salaries competitive with the private sector,” Kelley said. “Federal employees take great pride in serving their country and do an admirable job of fulfilling their missions despite budgetary constraints. Paying them what they are worth is the reasonable thing to do.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.