Darrell Issa: “Mr. Chairman, while they are bringing up the appropriate face of this amendment, I think it is important to answer the…”

“Mr. Chairman, while they are bringing up the appropriate face of this amendment, I think it is important to answer the criticisms made by my colleagues, most of them fellow Committee on the Judiciary members. I agree with the chairman that this bill is an improvement, a considerable improvement in the characteristics of the INS. But it does not go far enough at all unless it addresses the question of whether managers can be fired. I, myself, was a manager for 20 years in business. And I served at will. You serve at will as a manager because your ineptness pays a dear price for many, many more people. At the present time, the people who allowed Mohammed Atta to come to this country wrongly, once, twice, three times have not been fired. The people who, in fact, failed to protect us have not been made accountable. They may have been moved, transferred or even promoted. That is not accountability. And when we talk about patronage, and I respect my colleagues' defense of the status quo of jobs for life that often exist within the Federal service, I might remind them that the FBI does not enjoy that and the FBI is not a patronage organization.”