On the recordJuly 31, 2013
I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding. You know, it has been sad to have to sit here for so long and hear the Kafkaesque understanding of due process by the gentleman from Pennsylvania. In a word, due process has to come before the sanction, not after; before the loss of job, not after, or it means nothing. Today, of course, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2579 that would eliminate due process protections for senior executive servicemembers by allowing agency heads, political appointees, for the first time since the passage of the great civil service reforms in the early part of the 20th century, to fire Federal employees without giving them advance notice or an opportunity to address allegations against them before they are dismissed. This bill, in particular, gives real credence to the view that the series of bills on the floor today are an attack on Federal employees. H.R. 2579 would reverse the long-settled principle of ``innocent until proven guilty'' to ``guilty until proven innocent.'' Employees could be immediately fired by the politically appointed agency head. They could get their job back only by accepting the burden of proof to prove their innocence. It's not enough that employees would be notified of the reasons of their removal and would have 30 days to respond. They're gone. They're fired immediately.…
