30th Anniversary of the Congressional Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on another issue, I want to talk about the 30-year anniversary of a piece of legislation that I have been involved with.

A lot has happened during the first week of the second Trump administration. Within just 3 days in the White House, President Trump has put the pedal to the metal, delivering on the mandate voters expected when they went to the polls on November 5.

Now, thinking of history, it brings to mind a message the voters delivered 30 years ago. Some of my colleagues will remember what is called the Contract with America. That was a platform, if you remember, engineered by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich that led to what was called the Republican Revolution of 1994. In fact, it was so much of a revolution that I remember that in President Clinton's State of the Union Message, he said and opened his statement with these few words:

The era of big government is over.

That is how much the Gingrich contract rattled Washington, DC.

So the American people expressed that they were fed up with government-knows-best and a Washington mindset that applied rules for thee but not for me. Sounds familiar, doesn't it, 30 years later with the Trump mandate?

So I come to the Senate floor today to talk about one particular issue that still comes up at my county meetings. For years, Iowans have asked me something like this: Why doesn't Congress have to follow the same laws as we have to follow? That used to be true until we passed the Congressional Accountability Act. In fact, that law became law, law of the land, 30 years ago today.

Prior to 1995, Congress was exempt from about a dozen workplace laws that applied to the private sector but not to us in the Congress. I want to revisit how it came about.

In 1994, the American people delivered a landslide victory to Republicans. We gained majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. It was an epic victory considering that Democrats had run the House of Representatives for all but 4 years going way back to 1931.

The best approach to good leadership is to keep an ear to the ground and a finger to the pulse of the American people, much like our 45th and 47th President has done since 2017. Throughout my public service, that is how this U.S. Senator has worked to represent Iowans. By listening, by keeping in touch, and by going home every chance I get, I hold myself accountable to the people. This year, I will start my 45th consecutive year holding meetings with Iowans, holding Q&A meetings in each of Iowa's 99 counties.

Now, for a basis for keeping in touch and keeping government responsible, let's look at Federalist 57. In that Federalist Paper, James Madison wrote about the vital need for what he called ``communion of interests'' between the people and their leaders, ``without which every government degenerates into tyranny.'' In the 21st century, you could call that having skin in the game.

Back to this 30th anniversary of the Congressional Accountability Act, during the period of Congress having exemption from some workplace rules, Iowa's small businesses and Main Street civic leaders hit the nail on the head. They said to me and other Members of Congress: What is good for the goose ought to be good for the gander.

So some of us rolled up our sleeves and got to work. I teamed up with former Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut here in the Senate. Like many legislative efforts, it took years to build a bipartisan coalition to have these laws applied to the Congress of the United States. The 1994 electoral victory was the boost that we needed to get across the finish line.

On January 4, 1995, I reintroduced the Congressional Accountability Act. My good friend and former Senate majority leader Bob Dole summed up the reason for this legislation better than anybody else. I quote Senator Dole:

Many of our citizens have begun to view the Senate and House of Representatives not as a people's body, but as an ``imperial Congress,'' as an institution that considers itself above the law and without accountability.

That double standard had to end. We had to restore confidence with the American people. That is why I championed the Congressional Accountability Act--to inject common sense into lawmaking.

This Federal law would provide that lawmakers walk in the shoes of our constituents, abiding by the same workplace rights and worker protection laws, including civil rights, age discrimination, disability, overtime pay, and occupational safety and health laws.

One of my opponents during those years of trying to get this legislation passed was Senator Stevens of Alaska. I remember as this bill passed the U.S. Senate and I was victorious, he came up to me and poked his finger in my chest and said: I hope you are the first Senator to get sued because of this legislation.

Well, I haven't been sued, and I don't think anybody has been sued.

The first bill that we sent to the President's desk in the 104th Congress was the Congressional Accountability Act. President Clinton signed it, as I mentioned earlier, 30 years ago today, on January 23, 1995.

Since then, I have led reforms to expand whistleblower protections to employees in the legislative and executive branches. In 2018, President Trump signed into law reforms to the law's reporting and resolution process for workplace harassment claims.

Although the ink has long dried on the Congressional Accountability Act, we all still need to be fighting every day to keep a reality check here in Washington, DC.

I am going to finish with this ironic statement. Even though this legislation was passed 30 years ago and even though I have heard about its need for a long time before that, I still--as I say, ironically-- hear at my town meetings some constituents say to me: Why don't you have to live under the same laws that we live under? Then I have an opportunity to tell them about the Congressional Accountability Act.

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