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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, every year, at this time of the year, Sunshine Week is held around the birthday of James Madison--not only a former President but one of our greatest Founding Fathers and the acclaimed ``Father of the Constitution.''

Sunshine Week is a critical reminder of the need for transparency and open government. And our government is not as open as it should be.

President Madison famously said that a great difficulty in forming a government operated by imperfect people was that you must oblige it-- meaning the government--to control itself. Well, amen to what Madison said.

As a conservative, I have worked especially hard on Madison's challenge, making sure that the government controls itself. One way to do that is to limit the size and scope of the government. It is hard to control a government that does everything but make your bed and tuck you in to sleep.

Another check on out-of-control government is separation of powers-- the same separation of powers when you study the essentials of American government. Congress doesn't execute laws. The President and the executive agencies shouldn't try to make laws. And neither should our courts.

To control a government as big as ours, it takes a lot of very bright light shining on every Agency and Office. And instead of 1 week called Sunshine Week, we ought to have 365 days a year in which we have sunshine on our government's operation.

I have long supported the Freedom of Information Act. And that act urges Agencies to be more responsive to record requests. That is essential to open government because it gives citizens access to information. As the old saying goes, knowledge is power.

Congress also has a solemn constitutional duty to conduct strong oversight to ensure that the executive branch executes the laws as Congress has intended. You learn that in eighth grade civics class, called checks and balances of government. I call it oversight. But it is a constitutional responsibility.

We can't legislate effectively unless we in Congress know what is going on behind the scenes, and most of that behind-the-scenes is in the executive branch of government. That is why whistleblowers are so very important and why I rely on whistleblowers to give me a lot of information I would not have other access to. So I consider them a very important part of doing my role, my constitutional responsibility of oversight to see that a President does what the Constitution says, and his oath says to faithfully execute the laws.

These whistleblowers are patriots and our most powerful tool in rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct. Despite their vital contribution to good government, they are often targeted for retaliation and harassment. That should stop. In so many speeches, I have come to the floor of the U.S. Senate to point out specific examples of where these patriotic people we call whistleblowers are retaliated against and retaliated in a way that--the law says that retaliation is not lawful.

There is a growing trend among Federal Agencies to place a blanket of silence over whistleblowers. The Agencies do this by violating whistleblower disclosure laws, including withholding notice of what we call anti-gag provisions. In other words, if you are the head of an Agency and you have a whistleblower, you can't tell them they can't talk to Congress.

The law requires all Federal Agencies to include an anti-gag provision in their nondisclosure policies and forms. This provision notifies employees of their rights to report misconduct to Congress, to inspectors general, and to the Office of Special Counsel.

Without knowing of the anti-gag provision's protections, employees who see government wrongdoing often stay in the shadows. If people are notified that they can talk to Congress and the law protects them, we are more apt to get information on wrongdoing, the misexpenditure of money, or laws not being carried out as we intended that Congress wouldn't even know about.

The reason they don't speak is they fear the retaliation if they do speak out, and this is what I have spoken about so many times on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The fact that they are retaliated against is something that I say over and over again is unacceptable. That is why this week I wrote to all of our inspectors general of the executive branch of government, requesting they ensure this provision is included, as required by law, which will make it harder for Federal Agencies to conceal their wrongdoing.

This year, whistleblowers have helped to let the sunshine in where it matters most. They are helping me track down vulnerable migrant children the Biden Department of Health and Human Services has failed to protect against potential trafficking. As we speak, law enforcement is working through information I provided to hopefully bring their own special kind of sunshine to the criminals taking advantage of these young kids.

I have also sought information from government contractors who receive billions of taxpayer dollars to care for unaccompanied children but whose practices and failures are largely shielded from public knowledge and scrutiny. We need a full accounting of how contractors spend the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

That is why last year I also launched an investigation into one of the Environmental Protection Agency's grant programs. That exposed significant waste. It turns out that the EPA doesn't even require the program's grantees to submit financial documents during the grant that show how taxpayer money is being spent by those various organizations.

You would think Agencies would be very grateful when these failures are exposed. Instead, you know what--I was met with delay and obstruction by this administration's EPA. Accountability can be uncomfortable, and bureaucrats don't like it. After I reported that obstruction to the EPA Office of Inspector General, it agreed to audit the program and look into how EPA influenced grantees to obstruct my oversight.

Then we get to the Justice Department and the FBI. Recently, the Justice Department indicted an FBI confidential human source who served as the basis for what is commonly known as the document 1023. That is the FBI-generated document that Chairman Comer in the House and I made public alleging criminal bribery schemes between the Biden family and a foreign national. Embarrassingly, for 3 years, the 1023 collected dust--until Congress and Justice Department whistleblowers forced the FBI and U.S. Attorney Weiss to interview that FBI source.

The Federal indictment doesn't explain the full set of facts and leaves many questions unanswered. Those questions include how the Justice Department and the FBI could use this confidential human source for approximately 13 years, pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars, use his information in investigations and prosecutions, and then ultimately determine after 13 or 14 years that this guy is a liar. According to government documents in the court case, the FBI source was reporting information to the FBI as late as December 2023.

This is a matter that requires extensive sunlight.

If not for whistleblowers, my securing the document 1023 and releasing that document, do you know what? The FBI would still be believing the lies of their confidential human source, and they would still be paying taxpayer dollars to this confidential source for the lies he was giving to the FBI. Now, they have arrested him because of my oversight work. So what is the government doing to get all the money back that they paid him?

In addition to my investigative efforts, I have worked with a bipartisan set of colleagues to strengthen attorney misconduct oversight at the Justice Department. For example, I cosponsored bipartisan legislation to close a loophole that prevents the inspector general at the Department of Justice from investigating alleged Justice Department attorney misconduct. Now, understand, in the Department of Justice, the inspector general, who is supposed to sort out wrongdoing, can't even investigate the lawyers of that Department when they do misconduct.

My consistent efforts to let in sunshine continue across our government, whether it is asking the FBI to explain a memo targeting Catholics based on biased sources, ensuring our immigration officials follow the law and collect DNA from illegal migrants they encounter at the border, or even exposing flaws at the Veterans' Administration that endangered the privacy of our veterans.

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