Sometimes it's interesting to examine federal spending in just a little more detail. Here's a comparison of two well-known government organizations--the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the State Department (State).

Of course, we know that the IRS is responsible for the administration of the tax code and the collection of taxes.

Well, the IRS doesn't exactly collect all the taxes. For a number of years they "outsourced" tax collection to third party firms who were able to keep between 29-39% of all the taxes they collected from taxpayers paying the federal government the balance after their "fee". Rcently, after the revelation of many abuses by these private firms, the IRS has decided that it should collect the taxes. In order to replace the private market firms, they are in the process of hiring 17,000 new employees, and increase of about 15% in the IRS payroll.

The State Department is responsible for the foreign affairs of the United States, planning and establishing strategic alliances, distributing foreign aid to countries we seek to establish alliances with, representing the U.S. and it's interests in a variety of international organizations, manning and operating the system of embassies and consulates thruout the world, and administering the passport agency.

So how do these two oft-mentioned departments compare? Here's a brief summary of the current payroll and budget of each department.

Internal Revenue Service
Current number of employees 110,000
Fiscal 2010 Budget $11.52 billion

State Department
Current number of employees 26,800 (plus 31,000 foreign nationals employed overseas)
Fiscal 2010 Budget $16.39 billion

The IRS employment includes the 17,000 new employees they are currently in the process of hiring. The number of State Department employees does not include foreign workers hired to work in embassies, consulates and other facilities overseas, although the budget number does include the costs of foreign workers. The budget for State includes "planned" distributions of foreign aid. But a substantial amount of foreign aid is authorized by Congress in special spending bills outside the normal budget appropriation.

Does anyone see anything fundamentally wrong with where our money is being spent by these two departments? I know I do.