Political Quotes

“Madam President, the bill before us, S. 3187, did not address a top priority of mine, and that is ensuring whistleblowers have adequate protections. Four months ago my office learned of a very abusive treatment by the FDA on certain whistleblowers due to those whistleblowers' protected communications with Congress and, more specifically, with this Senator's office. Once the agency learned of the communication, even though they were on personal e-mail, it began actively monitoring and observing employees' personal e-mail, as one might expect, and they observed those e-mail accounts for 2 years--for a whole 2 years--until the agency was able to have the employee fired. Whistleblowers shouldn't be fired for doing what is patriotic; that is, reporting wrongdoing to Congress. Regrettably, I was not shocked to learn that the FDA was mistreating whistleblowers within its agency, as it has done on more than one occasion, and as I have pointed out to my colleagues. I have been reporting those things ever since the Vioxx situation of 2004, I believe. What makes this example different, though--and even worse--is the FDA intentionally went after an employee because it knew this employee was not covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act. Now, it might surprise some of my colleagues that all employees aren't covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act.…”