Senior Executive Service Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the gentleman from Michigan for his bill.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is about accountability, accountability for Senior Executive Service people, people like Lois Lerner.

The ranking member of the committee who I have a great deal of respect for stated in his opening comments that he is nervous about this legislation because it might ``politicize senior government officials.'' Well, that is what we have now.

I mean, what could be more political than a high-ranking official at the Internal Revenue Service targeting people who disagreed with her political views? This is all about holding people accountable who do the very things the ranking member talked about.

We need this legislation because, Lord knows, the Justice Department is not doing their job. They are not holding anyone accountable. I mean, think about this fact pattern: you have got the FBI leaking to The Wall Street Journal in January of this year that no one is going to be prosecuted in the IRS scandal.

You have got the President's now famous remark on Super Bowl Sunday, on national television, where he says:

There is no corruption here, not even a smidgen.

Talk about prejudging the outcome of a case when you have the highest-ranking official in the executive branch, and, of course, we have now--we have known about for several months--the lead attorney at the Justice Department on this case, Barbara Bosserman, who gave $6,750 to the President's reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee; so, of course, we need something like this because the Justice Department isn't going to hold anyone to account.

Now, there is one bright spot, Mr. Speaker. This House in a bipartisan fashion told the Attorney General that we need a special prosecutor. Every single Republican voted for that measure. More importantly, 26 Democrats said, This is so egregious; this is so wrong. We not only need Mr. Walberg's legislation, but we need a special prosecutor in the Justice Department to hold people to account.

When I talk with folks back home--every single day I am out and about, they walk up to me. ``Someone needs to be held to account for systematically targeting our most fundamental right, our First Amendment right to speak out in a political fashion against our government. That was targeted, and people need to be held to account for it.''

That is why I applaud the gentleman from North Carolina for his work on the committee and the gentleman from Michigan for sponsoring this great piece of legislation.

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