Union chief blasts GOP governor for comparing IRS to Gestapo

The head of a key federal worker union is blasting Gov. Paul LePage (R-Maine) for comparing IRS workers to the Gestapo.

Colleen Kelley, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, noted that LePage had walked back from his comments, made in a radio address last weekend.

But Kelley also said that LePage, a Tea Party favorite in his first term as Maine governor, had not apologized to federal employees for what she termed his “scurrilous and absurd comparison.”

“This is exactly the type of over-the-top political rhetoric that is not only a disservice to our national discourse, but to the long history of noble public service,” Kelley added in a letter to LePage, dated Tuesday.

“I hear from federal employees each and every day, from Maine and from every state of our union, and they are tired of being belittled and demonized in the name of political gamesmanship.”

LePage had compared the IRS to the Nazi secret police during an address criticizing the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Democratic healthcare overhaul, which said that the law’s mandate was constitutional under Congress’s taxing power.

“This decision has made America less free,” LePage said. “We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo – the IRS.”

The Maine governor backtracked from those statements on Monday, saying it was “not my intent to insult anyone, especially the Jewish community, or minimize the fact that millions of people were murdered.”

But LePage also said that his word choice also took attention away from his message that the healthcare law was infringing on Americans’ rights.

“With every step that Obamacare moves forward, our individual freedoms are being stripped away by the Federal Government,” LePage added in his Monday statement. “This should anger all Americans.”

While LePage has attracted controversy for his weekend address, he is also far from the only Republican to express concern about the Supreme Court’s decision and its effect on Congress’s ability to levy taxes.

House Republicans and witnesses at a Ways and Means hearing on Tuesday suggested that, under the Supreme Court ruling, the federal government could tax people for the sort of car they choose, or for deciding not to recycle.

Democrats have said that the penalty from the mandate will affect just a sliver of the population, and legal experts who agree with the Supreme Court say the decision broke no new ground.

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