[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 13 (Tuesday, January 24, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H612-H613]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     FEDERAL EMPLOYEE HIRING FREEZE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, yesterday President Trump issued an executive 
order. He imposed a hiring freeze on the Federal workforce. It was not 
only a freeze, but an attack on those serving our country and a 
misguided action that will achieve the opposite of what is intended.
  For those who are listening in the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, let me say 
that I am proud to represent 62,000 Federal employees. Hopefully, all 
of us refer to them as working people. We all say we want to be 
supportive of working people. Some people, however, in this body and 
down the avenue exempt Federal employees as working people.
  They are not only working people, but they are working for the 
American people. Let's not forget that two-thirds of Federal employees 
live and work outside the Greater Washington area. It is very nice to 
say ``all of those bureaucrats in Washington,'' but two-thirds of our 
Federal employees serve in every community around our country, serve in 
protecting them: FBI agents; agents around the world who work for the 
Central Intelligence Agency--117 of whom died in service, and the 
President spoke in front of their memorial the other day--employees of 
the Centers for Disease Control keeping us healthy as communities and 
as a country, protecting our children and our families from diseases 
that would attack us; Federal employees at the National Institutes of 
Health studying how we prevent and cure cancer, heart disease, lung 
disease, diabetes, autism, other afflictions that confront our country, 
both health care from a physical and mental standpoint; and, yes, 
nurses at our veterans hospitals. A freeze so that if a nurse leaves, 
you can't replace her or him; a doctor at a veterans hospital leaves, 
you can't replace that doctor, apparently; even at the IRS where we 
talk about making sure our tax system is fair and making sure that 
everybody pays their fair share, we undermine the ability to make that 
a reality; our Border Patrol to keep our borders safe; homeland 
security to keep our homeland safe--they serve the public in every 
State and every congressional district in the country.
  This hiring freeze will not save us money or do anything to make the 
government more efficient. Should we do both? Yes. Will this policy do 
it? No. Its effect will be a reduction in the level of service 
benefiting the American people, greater difficulty in recruiting and 
retaining the most talented Americans to public service, and increased 
costs as a result of having to hire more expensive private contractors 
to do the work that still needs to be done.
  That is something that the public doesn't understand, that, frankly, 
we exploded, in the early part of this century, the contracting out, 
which gave us less control and more cost. It is more expensive to 
contract out.

                              {time}  1015

  Already, our Federal employees have made significant sacrifices 
toward achieving a greater fiscal sustainability in this country. Now, 
let me give you the magnitude of that. Federal employees, over the last 
10 years, have given up $159 billion in pay and benefits to which they 
would otherwise have been entitled, but we withdrew those resources 
from them.
  Instead of continuing to vilify Federal civilian employees, as they 
have done for years--and when I say they, the politicians have done it, 
mostly on the Republican side of the aisle, but perhaps not 
exclusively--vilified our Federal employees. Republicans in Congress 
and in the White House ought to be thanking them for their hard work. I 
can't imagine any of us would treat our own employees, Mr. Speaker, in 
a fashion that said we are going to lay you off, we are going to 
undercut

[[Page H613]]

your pay, we are not going to give you the benefits which we promised 
you, and think that they were going to keep personnel on board with 
high morale and highly motivated to do the job, not only for us Members 
but for the American people. No employer would think that they can 
mistreat their employees and expect the highest performance out of 
them. And certainly no employer would think that if I treat my 
employees the way we have been treating Federal employees that we could 
recruit and retain the best and the brightest to serve our country.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge the President to rescind his order. That is not 
to say that executives in all of these agencies should not look at 
making sure that we have the proper number of employees on board and 
are acting efficiently and effectively and working hard to accomplish 
the objectives that we as a Congress, on behalf of the American people, 
have given them. That is the issue.
  I urge my Republican friends, in this House and in the Senate, to 
speak out against it. And I urge all Federal employees and their 
families to speak up in their communities across our country to remind 
their fellow Americans of the important work they do and why this 
hiring freeze would be so harmful to our country.
  Giving one another respect in America is not political correctness. 
It is the way we ought to treat one another. And we ought to treat our 
public employees who work for us and our country with the same kind of 
respect that we would want for ourselves. Frankly, respect of one 
another was a victim in this last campaign, but it should not be and 
must not be the norm.

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