On the recordAugust 5, 2015
I come to the floor, as I often do, to speak about the efforts of whistleblowers. Many of you know my belief in and my respect for those patriotic people--men and women who, often at great cost to their own careers and personal well-being, raise their voices when they see things happening they know are wrong, usually against the law or the misuse of taxpayer money. So it was with great joy that I participated just last Thursday with about two dozen whistleblowers and hundreds of their families, friends, and supporters in the first annual congressional celebration of National Whistleblowers Day. In my remarks to that group, I said that agency leadership needs to follow the example my colleagues and I set with the Whistleblower Protection Caucus. They need to send a strong signal that whistleblowers are valued and that retaliation will not be tolerated. After all, the need to protect whistleblowers is not new and it is not going away. In the midst of the whistleblowers appreciation day celebration, I received yet another harsh reminder that retaliation is alive and well in the executive branch's bureaucracies. At the very time several of my colleagues and I shared our appreciation for whistleblowers, U.S. Marshals Service whistleblowers told me the hunt was on for folks in that agency who disclosed wrongdoing to my office.…





