Preventing A Patronage System Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleagues talking about the politicization of how we deal with Federal employees. The fact is, the bureaucracy has never been more politicized than it is today.

This bill is the Federal bureaucrat protection act. That is what this is. Let's be a hundred percent clear. This is about leftists in this body wanting to protect the entrenched leftists in the bureaucracy, undermining the will of the American people every single day. That is what it is about.

We don't want to allow the people who are running the agencies to go in and fire people who are either not doing their job, completely violating their ethics at the desk, or, frankly, are going right against the law or the will of the American people.

Look no further than the Department of Homeland Security, which is turning a blind eye to our border. Look no further than an FBI that is targeting parents for daring to challenge school boards. That is what your Federal bureaucracy is doing.

All of these charges being levied, saying, oh, this is about hate, going after Federal employees--I am a former Federal prosecutor and worked with the Department of Justice. My father worked in the Federal Government for 20 years right here. But I know why the gentleman, my friend, Mr. Beyer, was here: Because the richest counties in America are right here in Fairfax, Loudoun County, Montgomery County, feeding right off of the back of the beast that is the Federal Government, the bureaucrats that are stepping over the will of the American people.

If we dare put forward legislation, like I have, to say that those bureaucrats should be able to be fired at will--for example, how about the HUD employee caught using his work email for private business deals, the postal employee arrested for bringing cocaine into the workplace, and the EPA employee who spent years viewing pornography for 2 to 6 hours a workday?

The fact is, only 25 percent of Federal supervisors felt they could successfully remove an employee, while 78 percent reported that previous efforts to remove an employee had no effect. Only 3 percent of whistleblower complaints are substantiated. Mr. Speaker, 175 of 16,000 discrimination complaints were substantiated in 2019.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to preserve an entrenched bureaucracy to step over the will of the people so that this town can decide the well-being of the American people. That is what it is about.

It is about power. It is about the entrenchment of power among bureaucrats. My colleagues know it, and that is why they are trying to advance this legislation.

Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, I refer to my prior statements and reiterate that schedule F was never about removing employees who are performing poorly. There is a whole process to do that.

This is about protecting the integrity of a merit-based system, so people are not retaliated against and fired because they are not doing what somebody is dictating them to do.

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