Washington, D.C. - Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I am proud to join the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) in offering this amendment. As we have heard, last year, tucked into the 2004 defense authorization bill was a provision that gave the Bush administration, and any other future administration, Republican or Democrat, a virtually blank check to rewrite the rules and protections that govern 700,000 civil servants in the Department of Defense. What that provision did was strip Pentagon civilians of the statutory protections we have had on a bipartisan basis for decades.
We in this Congress, we in this House, have an obligation to ensure that those civilian employees of the Defense Department are treated fairly and treated with respect, and we should not surrender that authority and those obligations to any administration, Republican or Democrat. Yet that is what we did last year in the authorization bill.
While the Committee on Armed Services may have considered this issue, the fact of the matter is the full House has never had an opportunity to consider this issue, because the Committee on Rules did not make in order an amendment on exactly this question. So we did not have an opportunity to debate this last year in the House. This is the first time we now have an opportunity to address this issue straight on.
The testimony we have heard from the administration officials over the years, Republican and Democrat, has been clear, that our national security depends on a strong partnership between the military part of the Pentagon and the civilian civil servants. Taking away the basic protections that our civil servants enjoy with the Department of Defense would damage that partnership, it would hurt morale, and it sends a terrible message to the many men and women whom we entrust with important national security work.
Why should we give the executive branch the authority to eliminate rules that protect employees from discrimination based on political affiliation? Do we not want people to exercise independent political judgment and not fear political repercussions? Why should we give the Executive Branch the authority to rewrite and eliminate rules of due process that protect employees in certain situations? Why should we give the executive branch the authority to eliminate the requirement that DOD bargain in good faith with their employees?
Now, last year, many in the administration said, ``don't worry, we are not going to take advantage of those authorities. Trust us. We will not go that far.''
Well, in February we saw the first Department of Defense draft of the rules, and the fact of the matter is, on both sides of the aisle, many people said, wait a minute, when we signed up for this, we did not think you were going to exercise your authority in this way in terms of taking away certain good faith bargaining rights.
So that is what this amendment is about. As my colleague from Washington said, this does not throw out all the authorities. What we are saying is let us take a year, let us take a time out, and let us adopt the adage that many have shown is good advice, ``trust, but verify.'' Why should we provide a blank check?
Let us give the administration an opportunity now to come before the Congress to show us exactly what rules they want, and we can have an opportunity to take a look at them, rather than giving them a blank check in advance and then being totally at their mercy as to what they put in effect.
So this is a common sense provision. I believe it is a bipartisan amendment. Let us let the administration tell us what they plan to do, and, if we think it makes sense, we can move forward on it at that time.
Trust, but verify.