Jay Inslee: “my point I want to make is this does not stop DOD in their tracks from at least thinking about this issue. They will be…”

“my point I want to make is this does not stop DOD in their tracks from at least thinking about this issue. They will be allowed to consider this issue, but they will not be able to actually pull the trigger to waive these collective bargaining rights, to waive these appeal rights, to waive these due process rights. Third: One friend on the other side of the aisle suggested that this amendment is a bad idea, because now we are in the age of faxes and computers and this is a new day and age, so we should give unfettered discretion to the Department of Defense to have a new personnel system without statutory rules. Well, we can use faxes and computers and e-mail and answering machines, but we need to have a system of law to govern what due process rights the Congress has a role in deciding. These are rights that belong to individuals that are held very dearly by our employees, and we can use computers and faxes, but we need to do in a method that is rules-based. We got into a little trouble, we got into a little trouble when the Department of Defense decided they could sort of ignore this rules-based Geneva treaty system, because they thought they should just have unilateral discretion in deciding how to handle some of these issues. That was kind of a sort of suggestion that we need rules.…”