Political Quotes

“in the short time remaining let me bring us back to the need for the buyout bill because I think it is important. It is important to all the people in civil service, the people who really make the Government run. What has happened is basically out in the Federal workforce we have an imbalance between the managers and the people at the lower levels. When we do this 252,000 reduction which the administration has proposed, which I certainly support, if we do not have the buyout bill, we are going to get the wrong people out. We are going to have the people in the lower GS ratings, a high proportion minorities and women, who will be the ones forced out of Government while the people in the GS-13, -14, -15 levels will be the ones who stay in. The imbalance there is we have about one manager for each seven Federal employees now. Business and industry have a ratio of about 1 to 15, 1 to 12 or 1 to 15 or in some labor-intensive industries, 1 to 20 is the ratio between managers and the rest of the employees. So what we want to do with this buyout bill is give the option to the administration, not just to go through RIF's, reductions in force, in which the lower level people will be the ones forced out. What we want is to give them the option to correct this imbalance. That is what this buyout bill would do. The crime bill, of course, needs its funding. I supported that before and I support it again now.”