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Via Political Calculations, the biggest lenders to the U.S. federal government as of Tax Day 2014:

The biggest surprise in this edition of our chart (compared to the previous edition) is the appearance of Belgium on the list, which jumped ahead of several other nations by more than doubling the amount that is being lent to the U.S. government from the small European nation over the last six months. Since Belgium is a major international banking center, what this really represents is the accumulation of U.S. debt by other foreign entities through Belgium’s banks in much the same way as London’s banks have historically served this role for countries such as China.

Here though, it appears that Russia-based interests may be behind the apparent surge in the nation’s holdings of U.S. government-issued debt, with the driving factor being the desire to avoid losing access to the holdings from economic sanctions. Much of the increase in holdings through Belgium took place in the several months preceding Russia’s 23 February 2014 actions to seize control of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine, which indicates the very premeditated nature of the action.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to accumulate the share of the U.S. government’s debt, having gone from accounting for 1 out of every 8 dollars lent to the U.S. government to now account for nearly 1 out of every 7 dollars.

The recent report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change echoed the usual warnings, but one of the report’s 235 authors offered something of a new spin.

Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center in Somerville, Massachusetts, told NPR, “There’s no single techno-fix, there’s no silver bullet, but there is ‘silver birdshot’ — what we can do in industry, what we can do in buildings, what we can do in transport. And moreover, it is an opportunity for employment. Making efficient things and making them efficiently generally creates more jobs than digging resources out of the ground and burning them.”

Aside from the “silver birdshot,” the report was more notable for what it didn’t do: provide new evidence for global warming. As Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute pointed out, “we are now at 17 years and 8 months of no global warming,” and the climate models cited by the IPCC “have failed year in and year out.” Even so, President Obama says the debate is all settled. Taxpayers should note the source for that claim.

The IPCC is an Intergovernmental panel, hence a government mouthpiece. And the IPCC is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Nations, not exactly a model of efficiency. The UN budget for 2014-15 is $5.53 billion, which does not include more than $7 billion for peacekeeping operations and the costs of several major UN agencies. Who pays for all this?

The United States is the biggest financial contributor to the United Nations and pays 22 percent of the UN budget. What American taxpayers get for their money remains unclear. The UN does nothing to boost the US and global economies, and UN peacekeeping operations fail to prevent conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and other places. Now the UN’s climate alarmists are talking industrial efficiency and employment through “silver birdshot.” Taxpayers have good cause to regard this as more government BS.

When calculating the cost of government, taxpayers should never forget the Internal Revenue Service and its institutionalized waste.

As an official report notes, between October 1, 2010 and December 31, 2012, the IRS gave more than $2.8 million in bonuses to 2,800 employees with “recent substantiated conduct issues resulting in disciplinary action.” So the IRS chooses to reward the worst employees and does more than give them money. As the report notes, these same employees got “more than 27,000 hours in time-off awards” and 69 quality step increases all “within a year after the IRS substantiated their tax compliance problem.” So the bonus recipients were not only terrible employees but owed back taxes to their employer.

Why does this happen? As the report notes, with few exceptions “the IRS does not consider tax compliance or other misconduct when issuing performance awards or most other types of awards.” Further, government policies “do not provide guidance on providing awards to employees with conduct issues.” And providing awards to employees with conduct issues, especially those who fail to pay federal taxes, “appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.” So the bonuses to IRS tax deadbeats only “appears” to challenge the integrity of the system.

How to fix it? Somebody called the Human Capital Officer plans to conduct a study by June 30, 2014, “for the implementation of a policy requiring management to consider conduct issues resulting in disciplinary actions prior to awarding all types of performance and discretionary awards.” Actually, since IRS employees get generous salaries and benefits ending all bonuses would save some money. As the report notes, for fiscal year 2011, the IRS awarded almost $92 million in cash and almost 520,000 hours of time off to 70,500 of its approximately 104,400 employees. For fiscal year 2012, the IRS awarded $86 million in cash and almost 490,000 hours of time off to 67,870 of its approximately 98,000 employees.

Meanwhile, IRS employees are not the only government tax deadbeats. In 2011, according to this report, 311,536 federal employees were tax delinquents owing a total of $3.5 billion.

April 15, the deadline to file returns, looms large on the calendar of many Americans. That date, unfortunately, fails to give taxpayers the full picture of how much of their money government is taking. As the Tax Foundation explains that task falls to Tax Freedom Day, the day when the nation as a whole has “earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year.” It is “a vivid, calendar-based illustration of the cost of government.” This year Tax Freedom Day fell on April 21, a full 111 days into the year and three days later than last year. So up to that point, Americans have essentially been working for the government. The government doesn’t give that information to taxpayers. Independent organizations have to provide it.

In 2014, by the accounting of the Tax Foundation, Americans will pay $3.0 trillion in federal taxes and $1.5 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.5 trillion, or 30.2 percent of income. And the Foundation addresses another item the government ignores: federal borrowing. Since 2002 federal expenses have exceeded federal revenues, pushing annual budget deficits beyond $1 trillion from 2009 to 2012. Federal borrowing represents future taxes owed and pushes Tax Freedom Day to May 6, almost to the point of the latest Tax Freedom Day that included debt, on May 21, 1945. That was just after World War II, when another tax development occurred.

The federal government began withholding tax from workers’ paychecks. This was supposed to be temporary but the government likes getting workers money before they do, so they kept it in place. Any tax refund is simply a worker getting her own money back, and workers continue to toil for the government until April 21, Tax Freedom Day. But workers still aren’t out of the woods. Government is still grabbing their money before they get it and, as this column shows, wasting it on a massive scale. In a weak economy a deeply indebted government is establishing new entitlements such as Obamacare and new federal agencies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And politicians resist meaningful reforms such as a flat tax. So in years to come Tax Freedom Day will likely be occurring at even later dates.

One of the more disturbing trends that we’ve seen develop with the federal government’s bureaucrats in recent years is the growing extent to which they are placing their interests ahead of those of the American people. What makes what we’re seeing develop so disturbing is that we’re not just seeing the work of a culture of corruption, but rather the institutionalization of corruption.

That point is perhaps nowhere more clear than in a new staff report issued by the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight, which reveals some of the extent to which Charles Edwards, one of the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector Generals, abused his authority as “watchdog” for the American people to instead watch out more for the interests of senior officials at DHS.

The official tasked with keeping watch over the Department of Homeland Security was instead watching out for senior officials he considered his “friends,” according to a Senate probe.

A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a scathing report on Thursday that effectively confirmed many of the ethical allegations that have trailed Charles Edwards ever since he resigned his post in December as acting DHS inspector general. The report determined that he “jeopardized the independence” of his office by socializing with senior DHS officials and had reports “altered or delayed” to accommodate the department he was supposed to oversee….

The report also included, though did not confirm, allegations that Edwards’ office sat on information about the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal that could “influence an election.”

Judson Berger of Fox News describes the report:

The report paints the picture of an office torn apart by personal vendettas and political games. It included allegations that Edwards’ office retaliated against workers who spoke out and, in the words of one unnamed official, that Edwards himself cultivated a “toxic, totally dysfunctional and oppressive” work environment. One official told Senate investigators that the work atmosphere was one of “complete terror.”

The environment established by Edwards in his supposed-to-be-independent-and-impartial position as an Inspector General is key to understanding how corruption can become institutionalized within a government agency. Establishing a culture of fear, where the only thing that honest people can have confidence in is the knowledge that they will face severe retaliation by corrupt officials if they report any wrongdoing they observe, gives corrupt officials the freedom to pursue their own personal agendas without consequence.

And since corrupt officials can often use their influence within an organization to place their cronies in the positions that oversee their activities, they can pretty much write themselves a blank check if they’re looking to get away with misconduct.

Just see what has become of the IRS and the Department of Justice when these government agencies have put the interests of their friends ahead of the American people. And if you want to know what the human cost is for that kind of institutionalized corruption, just consider the stories now breaking about the conduct of senior Veterans Administration officials.

These are things that can only happen when the federal government’s bureaucrats have carte blanche to put their corrupt interests ahead of those of the American people.

“This thing is working.” That was President Obama on April 17. “This thing” is Obamacare, and the president says 8 million people have signed up and the so-called Affordable Care Act is covering more people at less cost than most would have predicted just a few months ago. In typical style, the president included no hard figures about overall costs. Estimates of those have emerged in Affordable Care Act at Four: Regulatory Costs Exceed Benefits by Twofold, a study from the American Action Forum.

The study says that from a regulatory perspective, the law has imposed more than $27.2 billion in total private sector costs, $8 billion in unfunded state burdens, and more than 159 million paperwork hours on local governments and affected entities. Further, the law has generated just $2.6 billion in annualized benefits, compared to $6.8 billion in annualized costs. By the study’s reckoning, Obamacare has “imposed 2.5 times more costs than it has produced in benefits.”

These figures don’t include the prediction of the Congressional Budget Office that the law will reduce employment by 2.5 million by 2024. The figures also exclude problems with the federal and state exchanges and the employer mandate. And so on.

As this report notes, Obamacare authorizes at least 11 regulations that will wield significant economic impact on small businesses. According to government figures, the total bill for these regulations will be $1.9 billion.

In government parlance, when something is “working” it means that the government is spending taxpayers’ money to empower bureaucrats. Hence, the EPA is working, the FDA is working, and the, count ‘em, 17 agencies in the “intelligence community” are working. The wars on poverty, drugs, terror, and obesity are also working.

“This thing is working” also has another meaning. Recall that Obamacare took away the health plans Americans secured on their own and wanted to keep. Obamacare then forced Americans into the inferior plans the government wants them to have. So on that score it is working very well.

In yet another example of how government bureaucrats look out only for their own interests, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is paying out over $1 million in bonuses to 1,150 of its employees who have failed to pay their tax bills in previous years. Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press reports on the findings of the U.S. Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration:

The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George’s report said the bonus program doesn’t violate federal regulations, but it’s inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

“These awards are designed to recognize and reward IRS employees for a job well done, and that is appropriate, because the IRS should encourage good performance,” George said. “However, while not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.”

Here are 10 tips that the IRS provides to regular taxpayers for paying their delinquent tax bills:

1. Tax bill payments If you get a bill this summer for late taxes, you are expected to promptly pay the tax owed including any penalties and interest. If you are unable to pay the amount due, it is often in your best interest to get a loan to pay the bill in full rather than to make installment payments to the IRS.
2. Additional time to pay Based on your circumstances, you may be granted a short additional time to pay your tax in full. A brief additional amount of time to pay can be requested through the Online Payment Agreement application at www.irs.gov or by calling 800-829-1040.
3. Credit card payments You can pay your bill with a credit card. The interest rate on a credit card may be lower than the combination of interest and penalties imposed by the Internal Revenue Code. To pay by credit card contact one of the following processing companies: Link2Gov at 888-PAY-1040 (or www.pay1040.com), RBS WorldPay, Inc. at 888-9PAY-TAX (or www.payUSAtax.com), or Official Payments Corporation at 888-UPAY-TAX (or www.officialpayments.com/fed).
4. Electronic Funds Transfer You can pay the balance by electronic funds transfer, check, money order, cashier’s check or cash. To pay using electronic funds transfer, use the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System by either calling 800-555-4477 or using the online access at www.eftps.gov.
5. Installment Agreement You may request an installment agreement if you cannot pay the liability in full. This is an agreement between you and the IRS to pay the amount due in monthly installment payments. You must first file all required returns and be current with estimated tax payments.
6. Online Payment Agreement If you owe $25,000 or less in combined tax, penalties and interest, you can request an installment agreement using the Online Payment Agreement application at www.irs.gov.
7. Form 9465 You can complete and mail an IRS Form 9465, Installment Agreement Request, along with your bill in the envelope you received from the IRS. The IRS will inform you (usually within 30 days) whether your request is approved, denied, or if additional information is needed.
8. Collection Information Statement You may still qualify for an installment agreement if you owe more than $25,000, but you are required to complete a Form 433F, Collection Information Statement, before the IRS will consider an installment agreement.
9. User fees If an installment agreement is approved, a one-time user fee will be charged. The user fee for a new agreement is $105 or $52 for agreements where payments are deducted directly from your bank account. For eligible individuals with lower incomes, the fee can be reduced to $43.
10. Check withholding Taxpayers who have a balance due may want to consider changing their W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate, with their employer. A withholding calculator at www.irs.gov can help taxpayers determine the amount that should be withheld.

At no time are regular U.S. taxpayers excused from having to pay their taxes. And while 1.1% of the employees of the IRS are delinquent on their taxes, which compares to 8.2% of regular taxpayers in the general public, employees of the IRS do not have the excuse of not understanding the excessive complexity of the U.S. tax code.

Because of that fact, the number of IRS employees who owe back taxes is really an example of their fellow bureaucrats, who are aware of their situation, looking the other way as they selectively enforce the nation’s laws. And now we know that selectively blind eye extends to the IRS’ employee bonus programs.

The current salary of a U.S. congressman is $174,000 a year, with party leaders in both houses bagging more. House Speaker John Boehner leads the pack with an annual salary of $223,500. The push is now on to increase congressional pay led by Rep. Jim Moran, Virginia Democrat, who laments that members of Congress are “underpaid” and that “a lot of members can’t even afford to live decently when they’re at their job in Washington.”

Some argue that Congressmen haven’t had a raise in while and that salaries are at their lowest levels since 1990 when one accounts for inflation. Promoters of a pay raise argue that this perpetuates a political culture where mostly the rich can afford to serve in office. A cost-of-living adjustment of 1.6 percent is set for January 2015. That would boost annual pay by $2800, so does Rep. Moran have a case?

With economic growth at a paltry 2.4 percent for the last quarter of 2013, it’s hard to argue that booming times warrant the increase. Moran argues that members of Congress are the “board of directors for the largest economic entity in the world.” But Moran also says that “it’s widely felt that they underperform,” and one notes that the pay raise is not tied to any performance measure. Nobody is talking about tying a pay raise to an increase in government accountability, transparency, the trimming of waste, or the elimination of redundant bureaucracies.

Members of Congress supposedly deserve a raise because it is expense to serve in Washington. Actually, when one “serves” the salary is not the major consideration. If an annual $174,000, plus generous benefits, is not enough, people should decline to run for Congress and do something else.

Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, contends that “It makes no sense for Congress to continue automatically receiving annual raises without having to publicly vote on it.” That might have some merit but nobody is talking about embattled American workers having a vote on the issue. For American workers a congressional pay raise is more evidence that the federal government always gets bigger, more expensive, and more resistant to reform.

From Wolters Kluwer, the publishers of the CCH Standard Tax Reporter, comes the answer to the perennial question: how long is the U.S. tax code?

For the 2013 tax year (the one for which you either needed to file to pay your federal income taxes or to file for an extension on April 15, 2014), it takes 73,954 pages of material that is specifically marketed to explain the U.S. federal income tax code to the people who need to know it best: tax professionals.

Political Calculations looks at the growth trend for the number of pages needed to explain the U.S. tax code during President Obama’s tenure in office:

In President Obama’s first two years in office, when his political party also controlled both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and used its control to impose massive new taxes on the American people like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the U.S. tax code grew to be 71,684 pages long, which works out to be an average exponential rate of 3.0% per year.

If it had been allowed to continue growing at that rate, the U.S. tax code would effectively double in length every 24 years.

After 2010 however, the Democratic Party lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives, with one of the outcomes of that loss being that the U.S. federal tax code has grown much more slowly in all the years since.

From 2010 to 2013, we find that the growth of the U.S. federal tax code has decelerated to grow at just a third of the rate that it did when the Democratic Party controlled the U.S. Congress and the White House. The tax code has grown at an exponential rate of just 1.0% per year since 2010, a pace that would have it double in size every 72 years.

Altogether, the U.S. federal tax code has grown at an average exponential rate of 1.8% per year since 2008.

Meanwhile, from 2009 through 2013, federal spending has increased at an average annual rate of 3.0% per year, while the total national debt has risen at an average annual rate of 10.8% per year.

None of those figures should be regarded as achievements….

The first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing added new confusion to the tragedy. Some politicians still blamed the FBI for not following up on tips from Russian intelligence but a government report blames the Russians for not providing sufficient information. Whatever the case, some facts remain clear.

No U.S. intelligence agency, military force, or law enforcement agency was able to prevent the Tsarnaev brothers from the April 15, 2013 attack that killed three and wounded more than 200. Likewise no U.S. intelligence, military, or law enforcement body was able to prevent U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan from killing 13 at Ford Hood in 2009. And of course the United States was not able to stop the 9/11 attacks. These failures came despite massively intrusive surveillance by the National Security Agency but the failures do not appear to have any budgetary fallout. Indeed the actual budget of the NSA and other spy agencies remains cloaked in secrecy. That calls to mind another example from not so long ago.

The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, a new book by Betty Medsger, shows how the FBI spying operations did not lead to the prevention of any bombing by the Weather Underground or any other group, and few arrests after the bombs detonated. So J. Edgar Hoover, “lacked the capacity to shape an approach to either law enforcement or intelligence gathering that safeguarded civil liberties or protected Americans from violence.” But his FBI did not suffer on the budgetary side.

Indeed, as Medsger shows, on only two occasions when FBI did not get its budget request it got more than it requested. And each year the government spent $30,000 on a new limo for Hoover in contrast to $5,000 to lease a limo for the President of the United States. There’s a lesson here. The budgets of intelligence and law enforcement agencies should have some link to their success at preventing violent attacks on Americans while preserving their rights and liberties.