Stop Government Abuse Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I rise today to explain a little bit about what's going on.

The other day we talked a little bit about the dizzying effects of being on this floor, and somehow things get twisted around, so when you see people bumping off the walls you know it's because of the spin.

Let me tell you what I'm talking about here today. When I walked on the floor today--and some of my friends did also--we passed the Capitol Police, passed all these people on the dais, we passed so many people on the way, and you would think that we are talking about every single person that works for the government.

Now, the truth of the matter is that there are over 2.1 million people working for the government. That doesn't include the Army. It doesn't include the post office. That includes people who are out there. So the people that we are talking about that we want to hold accountable--and, my goodness, what an unusual effort for Congress to try and hold people accountable. Why in the world would you do that? Half of us wouldn't be back here.

So we are talking about four-tenths of 1 percent. And as the President is fond of saying: "Just do the arithmetic. Just do the arithmetic.'' It isn't everybody that you talked about. It's not all these folks that are sitting here tonight. It's not the Capitol Police that we walk by. It's not the people that clean our offices every night. It's none of those folks. It's the senior executives.

Now, these poor people are going to be under such great duress by this that they're probably going to get their resumes together and that loud ``whoosh'' you hear is them running away from $199,000 a year jobs. Are you kidding me? You can't say that with a straight face about how are we ever going to keep qualified people here.

I got to tell you something. I've got a lot of unemployed people back in northwest Pennsylvania that will line up for these jobs. Now, the $199,000, of course, is the top of it. But the real kicker is they can't go over $230,000 with their bonuses. These are people that are going to walk away from these jobs because we have the unmitigated gall to hold them accountable to the people who pay those wages, and that's the American taxpayers. That's who we are talking about. My goodness, have we fallen that far away from what this country was supposed to be?

Now, here's all we are saying to them--and we came about this because in a hearing on the GSA we asked about why is Mr. Neely on leave with pay. The people at the GSA say: ``Well, you see, you don't understand, Congress. We don't have any mechanism to put them on leave without pay.'' I said: ``I have never heard anything like that.'' Of course I haven't heard it because I come from the private sector. We don't do that in the private sector. But what I did find out was they would love to have that.

The people we put in charge of these agencies would actually love to be able to hold those that work for them accountable and responsible. So what did we give them? We gave them the ability to do that. They can fire somebody on the spot. But we didn't do anything about their due process. That person is still entitled to come back and any protections under the law he or she still gets.

We can create an investigation on a leave without pay, but we also require that the agencies report to Congress every 45 days to let us know where the investigation is. My goodness, there's nothing harder in this body than trying to get information when there's an investigation under way. I just think that we've seen that the last couple of months, of: ``You want to get the information? Well, we can't talk about it now because there's an investigation going on.'' It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to the people I represent.

Now, you know when we talk about protecting American workers and we talk about what our duty is here, we were elected by a group of people from districts all over this country to come and represent them. According to the IRS, there are 145 million Americans who pay taxes. They file their taxes every year. There's 300 million out there, but 145 million pay taxes.

That's who it is that we are trying to protect. They're the ones that pay for every single thing that happens here. Or they cosign the note on the loan to keep this place floating.

So I want you to look at this now. There are ``total Federal employees''--2.1 million. Now, this little red sliver--and it's really hard to see--remember, this represents four-tenths of 1 percent. As the President would say: ``It's all about the arithmetic. It's all about the arithmetic.'' I would say to my colleagues on both sides, it's all about the people we represent.

I appreciate the spin. I appreciate the fact that you like to make every Capitol policeman think that he's unappreciated or she's unappreciated, or that everyone that works in our office is unappreciated, or that everybody from the private sector that works for this great Nation is unappreciated, but you know it's not true and you know what you are saying is not true.

What I would love to see is for you to stand up on this floor and look at people and say, this is what's going on, and you know it's not true. You absolutely know it's not true, but you say it anyway. And why? Because it wears well.

Thank you for bringing this legislation up, and thank you for protecting the American taxpayer.

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I've heard so much about pay being frozen that I've got to tell you: the people that I represent in the Third Congressional District of western Pennsylvania wish their pay had been frozen. It has gone down steadily since 2010.

We talk about the inability to get the economy going. I feel the same way--it's embarrassing--but at the end of the day, we are not benevolent monarchs. We are stewards of the taxpayers' moneys. All we are doing is talking about accountability. Only in Washington is ``accountability'' a bad word. In the private sector, ``accountability'' reigns. The market determines my accountability. That's what holds me accountable in coming from the private sector.

Why is that so foreign here to, all of a sudden, have bills--to have things in front of us--that will help us to say to people in charge to hold people responsible and to hold people accountable?

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