All Circuit Review Extension Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In November 2012, the President signed into law the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. This legislation was needed to update existing law to better help protect whistleblowers from retaliation for helping expose waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government.

Unfortunately, some managers were using loopholes in existing law to punish well-intentioned employees for bringing bad behavior to the light of day. These actions likely dissuaded some whistleblowers from coming forward to end wasteful or corrupt activities.

In addition, during the Oversight Committee's work on this legislation, it became apparent that many whistleblowers also may not have been getting a fair shake in Federal circuit court. Therefore, the legislation created a 2-year pilot allowing for all circuit review of whistleblower appeals, enabling whistleblower cases to be appealed outside the Federal circuit.

In the 18 months since the law's enactment, very few appeals have been heard outside of the Federal circuit, giving Congress an insufficient sample size to judge whether the various courts are appropriate venues for whistleblower appeals.

H.R. 4197 simply extends the 2-year all circuit review pilot for an additional 3 years. Extending the pilot will provide additional evidence for Congress to consider as we seek to determine the fairest and most efficient way for whistleblower cases to be handled under the Federal court system.

We must do everything in our power to help defend those who seek to do the right thing by protecting Americans and their hard-earned tax dollars.

I want to thank Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Cummings for their work on this legislation, and I support this legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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