Political Quotes

“Mr. President, actually, what the bill does is it requires, especially in cases of politically sensitive queries, that it be approved by a supervisor to take it out of the hands of the career individuals who in the past have or potentially have abused this authority. Now, there are two ways to skin this cat. The challenge of the political appointees is twofold. The first is it is a political appointee. There is a person who owes their job to the party in power in the White House. And so the thinking was that if you put someone like that in charge, it actually might lend itself to this being abused for political use. The second is, it is actually harder to hold political appointees accountable. As we saw this week, the only way to get rid of, for example, the Attorney General would be to impeach them. In this particular case, if it is a supervisor, that supervisor could be fired. Everyone in these Departments is ultimately accountable to the Attorney General and/or the FBI Director. And I would add one more point. Another reform that is in this bill that is important to point to is that the compensation of the FBI Director will now be directly tied to how the Department performs every single year on the audit of compliance with 702. So I urge this amendment be defeated. Vote on Amendment No. 1834 The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment.”