Bennie Thompson: “I applaud Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member Davis, and others for their work on this badly needed bill. This bill extends…”

“I applaud Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member Davis, and others for their work on this badly needed bill. This bill extends whistleblower protections to Federal employees who work on national security, mainly in the intelligence area, workers in the Transportation Security Administration, especially screeners, and Federal contractors, amongst others. As Chairman Waxman correctly identified, there is a tremendous need to protect Federal workers and contractors who are our best sources of identifying waste fraud, abuse or security problems. This bill treats Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) the same as all other Department employees by giving them full whistleblower protections, which TSOs currently do not have. Mr. Chairman, others will tell you that TSOs have adequate whistleblower rights. While this is debatably true on paper, it is not true in practice. The truth is TSOs do not enjoy full whistleblower protections. They have extremely limited whistleblower protections granted by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was entered into when TSA was part of the Department of Transportation.”