John Conyers: “Mr. Chairman, I have not been surprised by many amendments before, but here is an amendment that proposes to set aside…”

“Mr. Chairman, I have not been surprised by many amendments before, but here is an amendment that proposes to set aside the civil service laws as applied to hiring people at INS, and to set aside civil service law as it applies to their discharge. In other words, the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) wants to go back to the bad old days. What does he have in mind, patronage, or what? And why would we come up with such a narrow eviscerating of civil service law? Nobody has attacked civil service law on either side of the aisle, in my memory, and now it is being done here.”