Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, again, I want to laud my friend from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for his perspicacity in ferreting out this issue. It is a very important one. The use of internships in the Federal Government is a very underutilized tool when compared to the private sector. Many private sector companies will use internships for recruiting the talent it needs for the future. In many cases, 70 to 80 percent of those who intern for private sector corporations end up being hired because they have a carefully monitored program from orientation and recruitment to the tasks at hand during the pendency of the internship. The Federal Government does no such thing systematically. At the very beginning, if we are going to use internships as creatively as the private sector to recruit the next generation of Federal employees, since one-third of the current workforce is eligible for retirement over the next several years, we have to follow the lead my friends, Mr. Cummings of Maryland and Mr. Russell of Oklahoma, have just given us, and that is to make sure it is a safe workplace. Otherwise, who would be attracted to it? This piece of legislation is critical to our making Federal internships a meaningful tool in their recruitment and retention, so long as that workforce is protected by the same norms and same regulations as any Federal employee. I thank my friend, Mr. Cummings, for bringing this to our attention, and I thank Mr.…”