In a Daily Caller op-ed, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr calls out the Internal Revenue Service for its practice of re-hiring employees who had been previously fired:

One employee even had “DO NOT REHIRE” stamped in his personnel file. He was previously fired for being absent without leave for 312 hours. If you add that up, it’s a total of two months of missed work. He was found to be employed by the IRS when the investigation was conducted. This individual is impressive only in the skill with which he has ripped off the hard working Americans who pay his salary.

The problem of rehiring fired employees is exacerbated by the complex rules that make firing a bad employee nearly impossible in the first place. Managers must make heroic efforts to fire employees for misconduct. This process can include multiple reevaluations and appeals, often dragging out for months or even years.

Firing a bad employee is so difficult at the IRS that the employees who underperform or are merely incompetent are often just tolerated or reassigned to a different position. The employees who actually do get fired after undergoing the lengthy separation process are not just bad – they are the worst of the worst.

More here. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is set to appear before the Senate Finance Committee to address these issues. In the meantime, Burr has introduced the Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act of 2016, which bans the IRS from from rehiring employees who get fired.