Henry Waxman: “Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to put some perspective to this debate. We are faced with an anomalous situation. We are…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think we ought to put some perspective to this debate. We are faced with an anomalous situation. We are singling out seven Federal employees for special and unprecedented treatment by compensating them for their legal expenses. The House of Representatives has taken great pride in the fact that we are now going to operate under the rules that apply to other employers. That started in January of this year. In December of last year, over 100 House employees were summarily fired, and some of them apparently were fired because they were Democrats. They were, many of them, career people who had been here for a very long period of time. They are out. They do not have a job. No one is seeking to compensate them. What we are faced with in this case is not compensating people for losing their jobs, because six of the seven travel office employees got jobs right away. What we are seeking to do is to pay for their legal fees. That might be the right thing to do, but it might have been the right thing to do when Federal employees were targeted and smeared by Senator McCarthy and other investigators over the years.”