Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we are celebrating an important week in our system of self-government. This week is known as Sunshine Week. For the last 14 years, advocacy groups, good government watchdogs, and media organizations have joined forces to observe the importance of transparency and freedom of information. With transparency and freedom of information, there is more accountability in government. As a long- time champion of an open, accessible government, I speak today in support of those enduring principles.
Sunshine Week coincides each year with March 16. That is the day one of the Nation's Founding Fathers and fourth President of the United States was born. That person was James Madison, widely known as the Father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
From his writings in the Federalist Papers, it might be said that he was the architect who framed our system of checks and balances. Madison believed all powers of the government are derived of, by, and for the people. That is what brings me to the floor today.
The public has a right to know what their government is doing and how their government is spending the taxpayers' dollars. What is more, the American people owe a debt of gratitude to our fellow citizens who bravely come forward, often at great professional risk, to report wrongdoing in government. We ought to expect that out of government employees or any fellow citizen who knows something is wrong.
I am here today to talk about a ray of sunlight coming from the Defense Department. More specifically, I want to alert you about the whistleblower hotline managed by the inspector general. Once in a while, good news comes out of that Department.
I spend a lot of time on government oversight. Congressional oversight is part of our constitutional assignment to protect the power of the purse and to ensure that the laws we pass are faithfully executed.
My sights are set quite often on the Pentagon when it comes to oversight. The U.S. military is the strongest and mightiest in the world. Our men and women in uniform put their lives on the line to protect our sacred freedoms. Each of us should be fighting tooth and nail to make sure that they have the resources they need. I am not, however, talking about writing blank checks; I am talking about making sure that defense dollars are spent wisely.
The Pentagon shoulders a strategic and vital mission for America but is by no means infallible--not by a long shot. As with almost any bureaucracy or corporate organization, its workplace culture dictates that each individual should go along to get along, and that is not how it should be. Institutional foot-dragging at the Pentagon, for example, has hampered efforts to root out sexual misconduct. You read about it too often. A systemic bookkeeping system has plagued the Department of Defense for decades.
Nevertheless, I keep pressing the Pentagon to fix this fiscal mess. Every dollar lost to waste, fraud, and abuse is a dollar that could be put to better use for our men and women in uniform for better housing, as just one example.
I learned long ago that one of the best ways to expose wrongdoing is by listening to whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are the ones who have their noses and ears to the ground day in and day out. They are patriots doing their job in reporting wrongdoing. These patriots know the difference between right and wrong. So when their good conscience compels them to come forward, we should hear them out, and we need to encourage others to do the same.
Whistleblowers within the Defense Department help weed out improper payments, procurements, fraud, and other unethical schemes and misbehaviors that come at taxpayers' expense and the expense of military preparedness.
As cofounder and cochairman of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus, I lead efforts from Capitol Hill to strengthen protections and raise awareness for what is often an uphill battle for whistleblowers. In the rigid command of the U.S. military, the civilian workforce and uniformed members of the military are trained to follow protocol and to respect the chain of command. Instead of receiving a pat on the back for exposing wrongdoing, too many of these whistleblowers face retribution and reprisal. I often say they are treated like skunks at a picnic.
That brings me to the DOD whistleblower hotline, a vital conduit for whistleblower complaints. Once again, there is some good news about DOD and whistleblowers and trying to improve things there in a November IG report. It shows the huge backlog of tips has been reduced. You could say that it is a glimmer of hope in an otherwise swamp of secrecy.
You see, the report also exposes the bad news. The playbook of Federal authority--defend, delay, and deny--is alive and kicking. From fiscal years 2013 to 2018, the Office of the Inspector General found the number of reports tripled. It also showed the number of reprisal complaints doubled.
The report found that 350 Defense Department officials, most of them in the branches of the Armed Forces, retaliated against and sought to intimidate 195 whistleblowers. I can't speak about 195 cases, but I will bet, in many cases, many higher-ups in the chain of command would be embarrassed, and that is why it wasn't reported, and that is why these folks were retaliated against. This tells me also that higher-ups who are accused of retaliating against whistleblowers are going unpunished.
Consider, about 85 percent of the people who reported wrongdoing and faced professional punishment or personal embarrassment are still waiting for any remedy according to this inspector general report.
This sends a very unsubtle signal to whistleblowers: Blow the whistle at your own risk. When the top dogs who dish out retribution go unpunished, and some are even promoted, the message to the rank and file is loud and clear: Blow the whistle at your own risk.
Nearly 2 years ago, I came to the floor of the Senate to sound the alarm on this very subject. At that time I shared statistics from a 2016 IG report. It listed 406 hotline cases that had been open for more than 2 years. Nobody is in a hurry to do anything about wrongdoing in the Defense Department when things like that can accumulate. More than half of those 406 cases--246 cases to be exact--had been open for more than 1,000 days, and some had been lying around for 4 years. So back when I gave that speech a couple of years ago, I noted that the IG's office wasn't moving the needle, despite increases in personnel and money in the IG's office. The workforce-to-workload ratio was mismatched. Cases were adding up, and the corrosive workplace culture within the IG was a festering sore. Allegations of tampering with investigations and whitewashing cases were tarnishing the reputation of the premier whistleblower oversight unit at the Pentagon. Congressional watchdogs, like myself, should not have to watch the Pentagon watchdogs to keep oversight on track.
As I said, there is some good news. Things seemed to turn the corner when Acting Inspector General Fine recognized the antics of a bureaucracy run amuck.
I am glad to see a ray of sunlight coming from the IG's office. However, we still aren't out of the woods.
I want to thank those in the IG's office who are toiling to reduce this hotline backlog; however, the DOD needs to step up and face the music. DOD needs to own these failures in letting retaliators off the hook.
Failing to hold these folks accountable is a huge slap in the face to those in the Department who are performing their responsibilities every day with dedication and excellence, being patriotic people, blowing the whistle, and pointing out waste, fraud, and abuse.
It also happens to be a slap in the face of the taxpayers. It is telling these patriotic whistleblowers: Thanks but no thanks. Feel free to disclose your report, but we may press the mute button after processing the claim.
Make no mistake about it--the hotline becomes meaningless if whistleblowers lack confidence in the system. They will stop calling and stop reporting waste, fraud, and abuse.
My advice to Inspector General Fine is this: Put some mustard on it, and add some hot sauce while you are at it. Get down to the brass tacks, and recommend disciplinary action against those who retaliate against patriotic people pointing out waste, fraud, and abuse.
In closing, I would like to share a tip with the Department of Defense. This U.S. Senator will continue shining the spotlight on waste, fraud, and abuse at the Pentagon--and, of course, elsewhere--and I will continue advocating for whistleblowers with every tool at my disposal.
As an Iowa farmer, I know what a load of manure smells like. I am also very aware of why farmers make hay when the sun shines, and that is a very good lesson for good government. Sunshine helps hold government accountable to the American people, and that is why we celebrate Sunshine Week this week and every year now for, I think, 14 years--because Sunshine Week promotes openness and transparency in government.
That is why the Congress passed the Physician Payments Sunshine Act in 2010. This law establishes a mandatory national disclosure program in which drug and medical device manufacturers report payments to prescribers in teaching hospitals. However, it appears that some parties may not be disclosing this information.
That is why, in addition to what I told you about overseeing things in the Defense Department, it is necessary to call out HHS and CMS to be forthcoming about whether opportunities exist for us to work together to strengthen the law where all these things aren't being reported as they should be. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Free Trade
Mr. President, lastly, I would like to talk about free trade for a minute. I am calling on the administration to promptly remove the section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico. This will help clear the path for the United States-Mexico- Canadian Agreement to be ratified in all three countries. These tariffs and their retaliation are having a negative impact on Americans. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is supposed to be a free-trade agreement, but we don't have free trade with these tariffs in place.
As chairman of the Committee on Finance, I look forward to helping the President with this important task. And a little bit of advice for the President would come this way: I think he imposed tariffs on Mexican and Canadian steel and aluminum because he didn't think they were going to negotiate and said that is why he put the tariffs on. Obviously they negotiated in good faith because the President said he has a very good agreement. I happen to agree that he has a very good agreement. So wouldn't you think, then, that the tariffs ought to come off?
Somebody down at the White House recently told me: Well, you can't conflate the tariffs on aluminum and steel with the USMCA agreement. Well, don't tell me you can't conflate them when you conflate them when you say to the other side: If you don't negotiate, we are going to put these tariffs on.
I think there is a clear path to getting this done.
The President is concerned about the transshipment of steel from China, through Canada, into the United States, which obviously wouldn't be fair. They are concerned, as well, about surges in exports to the United States.
I think he would find Prime Minister Trudeau very open to receiving assurances that if the House of Commons in Canada moves ahead with approval of it, these tariffs would go off. At the same time, I think they will get assurances from the Canadian Government that they will make sure transshipment from China, through Canada, to the United States won't happen and that surges in exports won't happen as well.
If we can get the Canadian Government to approve this agreement, it seems to me it is going to be a lot easier to get through the Congress of the United States. And I think that just as soon as Mexico changes some labor laws they promised they would change to make labor more fair and less unfair to the American worker, I think the Mexican Senate will approve this agreement. But time is a factor here because Canada has to get this all done before they adjourn in June for their October elections.
It seems to me that when the President says he has a good agreement-- and there is a certain amount of anxiety out there about all these trade negotiations that are going on--we could get this thing settled pretty fast and reduce that anxiety, and we could make sure we enhance our economy more than the fine policies of this President, through taxes and through deregulation, have already improved the economy and keep it growing.
I would ask the President to consider moving this as fast as he can and get off of this business of negotiating trade and tariffs for quotas because that is not much better for the United States and not much better even for the Canadians, and it isn't going to satisfy the Canadians that they can move ahead before their election.
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