Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today marks the 30th anniversary of a very important law--the Whistleblower Protection Act. It is very important because people in government ought to listen to whistleblowers. They are very patriotic people. The law is a critical foundation for the whistleblower protections we have in place today. The Whistleblower Protection Act has helped to usher in a new era at our Federal Agencies. Government employees who are aware of waste, fraud, and abuse can now step forward and do the right thing, and they can do it with the law on their side. As one of the original cosponsors of the Whistleblower Protection Act, I remember what things were like before that law was passed. I will give some examples, and these examples aren't pretty. Back in the 1980s, I used to say that the whistleblower's only hope was like the desperate Charge of the Light Brigade. There were rarely any survivors. At the time, the executive branch saw whistleblowers not as patriots but as threats. Agencies wouldn't even verbally acknowledge the importance of whistleblowers in making government accountable to the people. Our whistleblower laws had no teeth, so there was nothing to stop it from happening and nothing to provide any relief at all to the patriotic whistleblowers who were then experiencing retaliation. To give an idea of just how bad things were, let's start in 1984.…”