Political Quotes

“Mr. President, each year on July 30, we take time to celebrate whistleblowers and the very hard role that whistleblowers play in keeping our government transparent and accountable. But the task of supporting whistleblowers doesn't start and stop on July 30; it is a year-round job. And here in this Congress, it is something that we have been working on for decades. When I first came to Washington in the 1970s, most of the whistleblower laws we take for granted today didn't even exist then. I like to tell people, anyone who dared to blow the whistle back at that time was about as welcome as a skunk at a picnic. People in government would often retaliate by trying to run the whistleblower off and make them out to be the problem instead of the problem the whistleblower was trying to present. I still hear about that kind of retaliation going on this very day in far too many cases. But, today, we have better whistleblower protections in place than we did years ago, and whistleblowers have important advocates in their corner to support them. The Nation owes a special thanks for many of the key whistleblower protections that we have in place this very day to my former colleague and good friend, Senator Carl Levin, who died yesterday at the age of 87. Carl was the original sponsor of the Whistleblower Protection Act back in 1989, and a cosponsor of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012.…”