Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) joined the Congressional Labor Caucus to deliver remarks on the House Floor regarding the deferred resignation offered to federal employees by Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
Below is a video and transcript of his remarks:
“I thank my colleague for taking this special order [hour]. I thank my colleague for his service. Full disclosure, my colleague and I probably represent between us about 150,000 federal employees.
“But I rise not for those federal employees, who I care a lot about, as does Mr. Ivey. But I rise for the federal employees throughout America, but not just for them. I rise because they serve America every day in critical places. For Veterans, for homeowners, for moms, for dads, for teachers, for doctors, for nurses, all of whom rely on the federal government so that they can give services needed by the American people.
“Why are we doing this? I just said upstairs that I’ve been here for 44 years. This is an unprecedented move taken by the Trump Administration and the Musk Administration in the first 15 days. No thought, no planning, no consultation. It is a blitzkrieg on the American government. Now, let me just give you the words of Russell Vought, who’s going to be heading up, apparently, the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget.
“This is what he said not so long ago: ‘We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them not to want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down.’ He was referring to the EPA, but he’s aimed his objective at all of the agencies of government.
“Mr. Speaker, I rise not only on behalf of federal workers, as I said, who every day perform the services we, the Congress representing the American people, have asked them to do. They didn’t create any of these agencies. We did. They did not give them the objectives. We did. They are performing the services for the American people that the American people need, and yes, want.
“The initial notice went out to two million people, approximately all of the civilian employees of the federal service. I want everybody to think for just one second, what if every – all two million Americans, civil servants said, ‘Okay, we’re gone,’ and then promised to be paid for seven months for doing no work? And the government shut down.
“Business, commerce. education, health care, public safety would all be shut down. That is not what the American people voted for. Are the people who help feed our seniors, our children who provide medical care to our Veterans, who keep our communities clean and safe, who help Americans recover from disasters, who defend our national security and provide countless other service to American people, villains? Hell no. They are heroes and absolutely essential for America to be great.
“When you treat federal workers as villains, you turn the American people into victims. That is what this administration is doing. They’ve offered federal workers a buyout with a deadline just hours away, without any consultation to determine the adverse, or, frankly, positive impact of such an action.
“That’s not what the American people expect us to do. I and the Members who speak here, and I hope all the Members of this House will do what the Founding Fathers thought we should do: be an independent branch of government to set policy and not allow the federal workers or the federal government to be run over by somebody who likes firing people.
“I yield back the balance of my time.”
