Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
“Sunshine Week”
Monday, March 11, 2024
Every 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’ve worked especially hard on Madison’s challenge, making sure the government controls itself.
One way to do that is to limit the size and scope of the government. It’s 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.
Congress doesn’t execute the laws, and the president and executive agencies shouldn’t try to make laws; 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.
Instead of one week, called Sunshine Week, we ought to have 365 days a year in which we have sunshine on our government’s operation.
I’ve long supported the Freedom of Information Act.
That act urges agencies to be more responsive to record requests.
That’s essential to open government, because it gives citizens access to information, and as the old saying goes, knowledge is power.
Congress also has a solemn constitutional duty to conduct strong oversight to ensure the executive branch executes the laws as Congress intended.
You learn that in eighth grade civics class, called checks and balances of government. I call that oversight.
It’s a constitutional responsibility.
We can’t legislate effectively unless we, in Congress, know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Most of that behind the scenes is in the executive branch of government.
That’s why whistleblowers are so very important, and why I rely on them to get me information I would not have other access to.
So, I consider them a very important part of doing my role of oversight, to see what the President does, what the constitution says and what 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’re often targeted for retaliation and harassment. That should stop.
So many speeches, I’ve come to the floor of the United States Senate to point out specific examples of where these patriotic people we call whistleblowers are retaliated against, and in a way that isn’t lawful.
There’s 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’re head of an agency and have a whistleblower, you can’t tell them that 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 protection, employees who see government wrongdoing often stay in the shadows.
So, if people are notified that they can talk to Congress and the law protects them, we’re more apt to get information of wrongdoing, the mis-expenditure of money or laws not being carried out as we intended.
The reason they don’t speak is that they fear the retaliation if they do speak out.
This is what I have spoken about so many times on the floor of the United States Senate.
The fact that they’re retaliated against is something that I say over and over again is unacceptable.
That’s 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’re 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’ve 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’s 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 the EPA doesn’t even require the program’s grantees to submit financial documents during the grant that show how taxpayer money was spent by those various organizations.
You’d think agencies would be very grateful when these failures are exposed. Instead, 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 the 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 FBI.
Recently, the Justice Department indicted an FBI Confidential Human Source that served as a basis for what is commonly known as the document, 1023.
That’s 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 three years, the FD-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 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, and my securing the document 1023 and releasing it, the FBI would still be believing the lies of their Confidential Human Source – and paying taxpayer dollars to this confidential source for his lies.
Now they have arrested him because of my oversight work.
So, what’s the government doing to get all the money back that they paid him?
In addition to my investigative efforts, I’ve worked with bipartisan colleagues to strengthen attorney misconduct oversight of the FBI.
For example, I’ve cosponsored bipartisan legislation to close a loophole that prevents the inspector general at the Department from investigating alleged Justice Department attorney misconduct.
Understand that, in the Department of Justice, the Inspector General, who is supposed to sort out wrongdoing, can’t even investigate the lawyers of the Department for potential misconduct.
My consistent efforts to let in sunshine continue across our government, whether it’s 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.
So, we all ought to be thankful for Sunshine Week, which is an opportunity for us, doing our constitutional duty of oversight, to highlight these efforts and to remind us that shining a constant light is essential to making government accountable to We the People.
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