Congress Resurrects Post-Civil War Rule to Weed Out Corrupt Federal Employees
No one should expect clemency just because they work in Washington D.C.
by Trey Sanchez
The newly sworn-in 115th Congress is showing its teeth by resurrecting a 140-year-old rule to remind federal employees they’re no longer protected from firing just because they work in Washington D.C.
It’s called the Holman Rule, named after an Indiana congressman, and was first introduced in 1876 when the Appropriations Committee was seeking ways to squelch the out-of-control debt the nation was gripped with after the Civil War.
Bringing back the rule that has since been blocked by miles of red tape thanks to civil service protections is Virginia Republican Morgan Griffith, who recently asked, “Who runs this country, the people of the United States or the people on the people’s payroll?”
The Holman Rule puts federal employees in check and removes the long-enjoyed protections which have kept too many corrupt employees on the federal payroll.
“There are too many people working in the federal government, too many federal agencies; there’s an alphabet soup,” said Jason Pye of the conservative/libertarian activist group FreedomWorks. “What we’re simply saying is the federal government has grown too big.”
The rule’s restoration has Democrats quite worried that Republicans will clean house, which they need to do. However, only President-elect Donald Trump or an act of Congress can remove an employee or a group of employees under the rule, so it’s unlikely to be used that often.
The Washington Examiner provided a few examples of where the Holman Rule could work wonders:
Take Elizabeth Rivera of Puerto Rico, for example, who was restored to her job at the Department of Veterans Affairs after pleading guilty to involvement in an armed robbery. Her union not only thwarted managers’ attempts to fire her, but even successfully won back pay for the period when she had been off the job. As part of its argument for her reinstatement, officials of the American Federation of Government Employees pointed out that her manager at the agency is also a convicted sex offender.
Of course, federal employees don’t have to go so far as to participate in violent or sexual crimes to diminish the reputation of the government. Internal Revenue Service employees who deleted Lois Lerner’s emails when they were under congressional subpoena were not fired. Aside from a few scapegoats, the VA employees who systematically manipulated the agency’s computer system at more than 100 facilities, harming veterans to win themselves performance bonuses, were not fired. Two VA managers who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from their agency could not be fired. Nor could many of those implicated in the notorious scandal involving a General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas in 2010.
“It’s time someone helped federal employees by instilling in them the same healthy fear of losing their job that everyone in the private sector experiences,” The Examiner added.
Get busy, Congress. This is why you were voted in.