On the recordNovember 18, 2010
This bill, as I said, will probably pass, and it will be a shame. I would hope that all Republicans and Democrats who know this could be better and voted for it when it was better would also vote against it, not because the outcome is certain, but because we have an opportunity to say we're not going to produce a new bureaucracy without some reservation when we know it could have been better. This is not a bill that creates the opportunity for telework. Every agency that sees this bill will look and say, darn, I've got to create a special entity that is a telework czar entity. They will know that for what it is. What it doesn't do is it doesn't give them the kind of additional new guidelines that really would keep this from being, in some cases, just a mandate for a perk, and in other cases a mandate for an agency creation within an agency. I think that's the most dangerous part of what we do. We should never, never give the Federal Government a requirement to do something and not give them the guidance, authority, and statute necessary to make sure they do it right.
