Because they're doing such a great job, right?

The Hill:

The IRS has given the green light to tens of millions of dollars in employee bonuses, a decision that congressional Republicans immediately rebuked.

IRS employees will receive around $43 million in bonuses this spring under an agreement reached with the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents some agency employees.

Union officials said that total was well short of the $75 million that the employees were owed under their labor agreement. But in the wake of last year's targeting controversy, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) quickly and sharply criticized the decision to give bonuses at all.

"It's hard to think of a group of people less deserving of bonuses than IRS employees. Frankly, this is outrageous," Hatch, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a statement. 

"I understand that not every IRS worker was responsible, but this just is the wrong signal to send the American people who were rightly outraged by how this agency treated people for their political views."

The decision on Monday by John Koskinen, the new IRS commissioner, to sign off on bonuses is a shift from previous agency leadership.

Danny Werfel, the interim chief installed by President Obama shortly after the agency apologized for singling out Tea Party groups, had moved to cut off bonuses last year.

In addition to the targeting controversy, the IRS, like other agencies, faced a tighter budget last year because of automatic sequestration cuts - a situation Werfel cited when he told employees he would seek to cut off bonuses.

But Koskinen, the new IRS commissioner, told employees that the bonuses would be money well spent on staffers that had faced a trying period at the agency. In all, the IRS will hand out some $62.5 million in bonuses to employees, well below the $89.1 million awarded in fiscal 2012.

I can't believe what I'm reading: "...the bonuses would be money well spent on staffers that had faced a trying period at the agency."

Are you bleeping me? Whose fault was the "trying period" faced by staffers in the first place?

(Excuse me while I wipe the spittle off my monitor screen.)

I generally don't think much of bonuses for government workers anyway. Why give someone extra for just doing his job? If we're going to hand out bonuses, then we should also cut the salaries of people who screw up.

Like IRS employees.

Apparently, IRS bigs don't care if the impression they give is that employees are being rewarded for targeting conservatives.