In addition to attacking public interest regulations the House GOP also spent this week attacking federal workers.
The VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act of 2016, passed on Wednesday, contains some good parts, but at its core, the bill is about weakening worker protections.
Here is a summary:
H.R. 5620 is basically a combination of two different bills. The first portion of H.R. 5620 is a similar to H.R. 1994 – VA Accountability Act of 2015 – which passed the House in July of 2015. That vote can be found here. Similarly, H.R. 5620 would give the Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs broad authority to fire, demote or take back previously given bonuses, awards or annuities to Veterans’ Affairs employees. The legislation would weaken protections for employees of the VA by: (1) shortening the notice period an employee receives for their removal from thirty days written notice to ten days; (2) removing the requirement that managers at the Department inform employees being removed for cause of the specific instances of unacceptable performance; (3) if the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) does not make a decision within sixty days, the termination would be final without any further review; (4) allowing the VA to eliminate previous time of service in calculation of annuities for Senior Executives if they were convicted of certain crimes; and (5) granting the ability for the Secretary to recoup bonuses, relocation payments, and other expenses already paid to employees. Strengthening and improving the VA will never be done when the protections of over 330,000 civil servants are weakened and procedural protections are taken away.
The second portion of H.R. 5620 is similar to H.R. 5083 – VA Appeals Modernization Act of 2016. Taken as a stand-alone bill, H.R. 5083 would make positive improvements to address the ballooning appeals backlog at the VA by allowing veterans to choose one of three avenues for their appeal: (1) a high level review for their claim which would allow a completely new review of the claim; (2) an opportunity to add evidence to their claim without review of the original submissions; or (3) a full review done by the Board of Veterans Appeals, either with new evidence or as an expedited review.
While H.R. 5083 would make improvements to the appeals process for veterans, it is combined with legislation that would ultimately weaken the VA by diminishing the quality of the workforce which would not benefit veterans or improve the VA. In addition, H.R. 5620 rewards poorly performing employees for filing false whistleblower claims that would overburden the Office of Special Counsel. The VA cannot expect to attract the best and brightest employees when those employees have diminished employment protections and appeals processes that are afforded to other federal employees.
The Democratic leadership advised members to vote NO, but that didn’t stop 69 Democrats from joining all but 4 Republicans in doing so.
The final vote, accordingly, was 244 to 174.
The four Republicans were Justin Amash (MI-03), Jimmy Duncan (TN-02), Walter Jones (NC-03), and Tom Massie (KY-04). Their opposition was likely different from that of the 170 Democrats voting NO.
And here are the 69 Democrats that bucked the party leadership to vote for it:
Pete Aguilar (CA-31)
Brad Ashford (NE-02)
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
Brendan Boyle (PA-13)
Julia Brownley (CA-26)
Cheri Bustos (IL-17)
John Carney (DE-AL)
Juan Castro (TX-20)
David Cicilline (RI-01)
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Jim Costa (CA-16)
Joe Courtney (CT-02)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
Susan Davis (CA-53)
Pete DeFazio (OR-04)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Lloyd Doggett (TX-35)
Tammy Duckworth (IL-08)
Elizabeth Esty (CT-05)
Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02)
John Garamendi (CA-03)
Gwen Graham (FL-02)
Alan Grayson (FL-09)
Al Green (TX-09)
Gene Green (TX-29)
Janice Hahn (CA-44)
Denny Heck (WA-10)
Jim Himes (CT-04)
Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15)
Steve Israel (NY-03)
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Bill Keating (MA-09)
Joe Kennedy (MA-04)
Derek Kilmer (WA-06)
Ron Kind (WI-03)
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01)
Annie Kuster (NH-02)
Jim Langevin (RI-02)
Joe Larson (CT-01)
Dan Lipinski (IL-03)
David Loebsack (IA-02)
Alan Lowenthal (CA-47)
Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01)
Ben Lujan (NM-03)
Sean Maloney (NY-18)
Jerry McNerney (CA-09)
Seth Moulton (MA-06)
Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
Richard Neal (MA-01)
Beto O’Rourke (TX-16)
Gary Peters (CA-52)
Collin Peterson (MN-07)
Kathleen Rice (NY-04)
Raul Ruiz (CA-36)
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02)
Tim Ryan (OH-13)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-46)
Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
David Scott (GA-13)
Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
Jackie Speier (CA-16)
Mike Thompson (CA-05)
Dina Titus (NV-01)
Niki Tsongas (MA-03)
Marc Veasey (TX-33)
Filemon Vela (TX-34)
Tim Walz (MN-01)