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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing tens of thousands of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees today pointed to separate calls from three leading members of the Senate “as more evidence” to the IRS that it should at least delay if not abandon its ill-advised and costly program to hire private sector debt collectors to pursue tax debts in exchange for a bounty on the money they collect.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said she strongly supports the opposition to the IRS program expressed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in separate letters to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson and by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in a letter to Everson and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

“Senators Kennedy, Dorgan and Murray are the latest members of Congress to express publicly the serious concerns that exist in both the House and Senate over this IRS privatization program,” President Kelley said. These three senators hold key positions with Sen. Murray being the ranking Democrat on the Treasury-Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees IRS funding, Sen. Kennedy is the ranking Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and Sen. Dorgan is also a member of the Treasury-Transportation Subcommittee and a member of the Democratic leadership.

The IRS plans to turn over tomorrow to three private debt collection agencies information on thousands of taxpayers despite the House already having voted to prevent the IRS from using any appropriated funds in fiscal 2007 to implement the program.

Sen. Murray, in her letter, told Everson, “I'm deeply concerned that your plan would not adequately protect taxpayer privacy, would not ensure all taxpayers are treated fairly and respectfully, would not guarantee any cost savings to the U.S. Treasury, and would pre-empt the Senate's debate over outsourcing tax collection.”

Sen. Kennedy echoed Sen. Murray and took note of the House vote and said in his letter to Everson that it “would be prudent” for the IRS to withhold action on the program while the Senate takes up its version of the Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill. “The bill that becomes law may well provide the IRS with further guidance on this issue,” he said. The full Senate has yet to take up its version of the bill.

Sen. Dorgan took the matter one step further, telling Everson and Secretary Paulson that if the agency goes ahead with its plan, he would introduce legislation similar to that in the House and would “push for a vote on my proposal by the full Senate at the first available opportunity.”

The North Dakota Democrat said “it would be a colossal mistake” for the IRS to move ahead with this plan, adding that paying a commission based on the amount of money collected “increases the potential for overzealous collection practices.”

The senators raised the question of cost, noting that the bounty to be paid to the private collectors will be eight times higher than the cost of having IRS employees perform the work—24 cents on the dollar versus only three cents per dollar to have the professionals at the IRS do the work.

What’s more, Sens. Kennedy and Dorgan expressed serious reservations about putting personal and sensitive taxpayer information in private hands. Sen. Kennedy reminded Commissioner Everson that just this June, it lost track of a computer containing information about hundreds of its own employees and job applicants—and that this loss was one of a dozen such cases in which federal agencies have allowed information to be compromised.

He called on the agency to “work with us in Congress to ensure that the IRS receives the resources it needs to fulfill its tax collection obligations”—a point also made by Sen. Dorgan, who said: “If the IRS now says it needs more resources for tax enforcement and collection activities, then Congress should consider it.”

If the agency doesn’t act quickly on its own to stop its planned use of private debt collectors, Sen. Dorgan said, “I will do everything in my power to put the brakes on this plan in the U.S. Senate.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including 94,000 in the IRS.