TSA Office of Inspection Accountability Act of 2014
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his leadership on the subcommittee. I would say the same to my colleague from Louisiana, for their respective pieces of work on this important bill.
As has already been noted by both of my colleagues, H.R. 4803 calls for, I guess, the institution of a fairly simple premise, and that is, we pay for what we get in government.
That is what they do in the private sector. That is what individuals do in the household. And if you stop and think about it, you wouldn't pay somebody who could run a backhoe or a bulldozer--heavy equipment, if you will--if all you needed was somebody who could run a shovel. You wouldn't pay a chemical engineer to come and clean your pool or mix the chemicals in the pool. You wouldn't hire Wolfgang Puck to come over and fix you a piece of grilled cheese. It may be the greatest piece of grilled cheese you could find, but it isn't what you would be paying for.
So this bill incorporates that commonsense notion of, in government, we ought to get what we pay for. And as has already been noted, criminal investigators in this case do not meet Federal standards with regard to the 50 percent threshold.
This bill does a couple of very, very simple things. It sets in place a standard by which to track whether or not they are doing so. And for the work that isn't to that standard, it eliminates this additional pay, the so-called LEAP pay. LEAP pay is law enforcement availability pay. As has already been noted, again, there is a 25 percent premium, but in many cases, this is the tip of the iceberg, because if you look at additional benefits in terms of early retirement or enhanced training, there is a real cost to the taxpayer that goes with continuing the road that we have been on.
This bill attempts to change that. It has teeth, and it freezes any hiring in the Office of Inspection going forward if these changes aren't made. As my colleague from North Carolina just noted, there are real savings: $17 million. It is small by Federal standards, but think about how many neighborhoods it takes to accumulate $17 million in taxes. It is a step in the right direction in saving taxpayer money.
Mr. Speaker, for all those reasons, I urge additional support of this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source