Whistleblowers are a group of people who seldom get the respect they deserve. Think about it, most whistleblowers are ordinary Americans with ordinary jobs and ordinary concerns. Despite their seeming ordinariness, these people decide to take the extraordinary step of putting their careers on the line to expose wrongdoers.
Employees face tremendous risks including the loss of their job, financial hardship and blackballing in the future for coming forward and revealing corruption, fraud or waste perpetrated by their employers. Given the tremendous good this whistleblowing can do for the country, it is crucial that this kind of behavior is encouraged and supported. That's exactly why Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has announced that he will work to create a special caucus of lawmakers concerned about whistleblower protection.
According to Senator Grassley, whistleblowers are often treated like "skunks at a picnic," an attitude he says he wants to see change. Whistleblowers should be praised, not reviled, and it's high time that legislators stood up for the important sacrifices made by those who come forward to reveal fraud and corruption.
Grassley has already worked hard for the benefit of whistleblowers, writing amendments for the 1986 False Claims Act, serving as co-author of the 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act and sponsoring the 2006 legislation that created the IRS whistleblower program. Grassley says he feels compelled to do more, and his next idea will involve gathering a group of like-minded Senators together to form a "whistleblower caucus."
Grassley has said that the effort may take up to six months and that his goal is to have the group up and running by the start of the next legislative session. Though it may not seem difficult to put together a group of senators who support whistleblower protection, the reality is that the steps required to create a formal caucus can be tedious. Paperwork will need to be filed, members enlisted and an agenda developed.
The hope is that with a powerful collection of senators and a clear agenda, Grassley will have success in more aggressively pushing a pro-whistleblower agenda. For instance, he's currently critical of the IRS's lack of efforts to follow up on the thousands of tips it has received as part of its whistleblower program. With the help of a caucus of similarly concerned legislators the hope is that the group would be able to speak with a united voice for such concerns, which would lead to faster changes.
Sources
Sen. Charles Grassley Plans New Whistleblower-Protection Caucus, by Josh Hicks, published at WashingtonPost.com on April 10, 2014.
Grassley Creating Senate Whistleblower Caucus, by Dylan Blaylock, published at Whistleblower.org on April 10, 2014.
Grassley Announces Plans for Whistleblower Caucus, published at Fedweek.com on May 8, 2014.
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