Political Quotes

“this bill is an important bill because it provides an opportunity for true reformation of the Department of Defense in its effort to go into the new century. Certainly we have tremendous successes that we have seen through the Department of Defense and our civilian employees and our men and women in uniform. But the opportunity to always achieve more and to have greater efficiencies is there before us. What we are doing in this bill in the area of the civil service is not something that is unknown or is speculative. It is based upon demonstration projects throughout the country, where civil service employees who have participated in it have found greater satisfaction, greater pay based on performance, greater retention of those employees who are contributing, a greater feeling that their work actually makes a difference with respect to their success and certainly the overall success of the Department of Defense. There have been many things that have been said over the past debate concerning this that are just absolutely not true. There have been allegations that collective bargaining is not preserved in the bill, but in fact the bill specifically references collective bargaining, and on page 1118, lines 14 to 15 of the bill before the Committee on Armed Services specifically set out language requiring collective bargaining. Similarly, the civil rights provisions are specifically provided in the bill, both by reference and by specific statement.”