Preventing A Patronage System Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I rise in strong support of this and the other two bills that we will vote on, the Oversight and Reform Committee bills that we are considering this week. Not only will they make government more accountable to the people it serves, they are also a testament to the extraordinary work and dedication to service of the committee's chairwoman, my friend, Carolyn Maloney.

She leaves Congress at the end of this year after an accomplishment of three decades in office. During that time, she has been a champion, not only for New York, but for all those across the country who cherish good government and the causes of justice, opportunity, and equality for which she has worked so very, very hard.

Few in the history of the Congress have worked on behalf of the consumers in a more dedicated and effective fashion than Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney.

Today, she continues that service by offering, on behalf of her committee, these three bills. I make particular mention of the bill authored by Chairman Gerry Connolly of the Government Operations Subcommittee, which has been strongly supported by Chairwoman Maloney and their colleagues and the committee's majority.

I, too, strongly support this effort, which would protect the nonpartisan nature of our civil service by ensuring that Presidents cannot simply fire Federal workers by reclassifying them as ``schedule F'' employees. That is what the previous President suggested. That is what his supporters are suggesting now.

And they are suggesting, not only that, but they are going to put people in place who want to follow their political edicts, legal or not. They made it quite clear they want to eliminate what they call the deep state.

The deep state is a cadre of professionals dedicated to honoring the Constitution, the laws of this country, and carrying out the policies of the Congress and the President.

By the way, it is the Congress that makes policy, under the Constitution, under Article I. It is the executive that carries out policies. Now, Presidents of both parties want to be policymakers also. I get that. It is a nonpartisan desire of Presidents.

But our Founders but, more importantly, those who adopted the Civil Service Reform Act and have made amendments subsequent to that, and a majority of the Congress of the United States, both parties, thought that it was in the interest of citizens to have a professional cadre of employees, not subject to political pressure, or whim, or edict, but subject to following the law and carrying out the policies of this country.

We must guard against a future President taking that dangerous step of making them employees at will. Frankly, we have had a very stark example of a President whose will was inconsistent with American principles.

We must not return to the kind of patronage system that fueled corruption and partisanship before the civil service reforms of the late 19th century.

The other two bills authored by Chairwoman Maloney are equally necessary and beneficial to the American people. The first would further protect whistleblowers against retaliation; and the second would protect the nonpartisan nature of the U.S. Census, prescribed by our Constitution, and so vital to equal representation.

When we passed whistleblower legislation and protections, we did so because we wanted people to be able to come forward and say the emperor has no clothes. The policies being pursued are being done inefficiently. The policies being pursued are wasting money. The policies being pursued are illegal.

That is why we protect whistleblowers, because it is in the interest of our citizens, of our country, and our laws and, by the way, in the interest of Congress, so that people can come forward to those of us who make policy, who appropriate money, to be told the policies that you passed are not being followed, or the money you dedicated is not being spent in the way you purposed it. So these bills are critically important.

And by the way, the Constitution says, count everybody. That is what the Constitution says. The Supreme Court said that is what it said. Not just my friends; not just the people who like me; count everybody.

And by the way, if you are going to change the rules, tell the Congress, and tell us before it is too late for us to do anything about it. That is all this bill says. This bill ought to be overwhelmingly supported by both sides of the aisle.

Very frankly, if you have a deep state, you would think you would want to make sure that the Congress is the one that sets the policies of who is counted and not counted and how it is counted.

President Lincoln famously described ours as a ``government of the people, by the people, and for the people.''

These bills, like the work of Chairwoman Maloney, throughout her career in public service, will help us keep it that way.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support these bills.

And in closing, once again, I congratulate Carolyn Maloney of New York for her dedicated, extraordinarily effective service to the people of New York, people of her city, the people of this country. She has been an extraordinary Member of this institution and has made us better.

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