During a campaign stop Tuesday in New Hampshire, Perry said he would send federal workers who fail to implement his policy changes to “a God-awful place,” a comment that earned laughs from the crowd and angry responses from federal worker union leaders.
In response, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chalked Perry’s comments up to presidential campaign politics.
“When you’re running for an office, particularly in the primary, I think there’s always going to be some people who you can’t control their comments or who make a popular statement for a short period of time,” Issa said Friday. “By the time we have a presumptive nominee, I would expect that we will be, and I will be, aggressively trying to make them understand that the reforms in the federal workforce are much, much more subtle, because most of the problems in the federal workforce can be traced back to how the Executive Branch, under political leadership, and Congress have told them to act.”
Speaking at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Issa said: “I think you don’t say, ‘You do this, or else.’ You say, ‘Look, changes are going to have to be made very clearly.’ ”
“The federal government is not so desperate that we have to somehow pretend we’re in bankruptcy,” Issa added later. “But we are in need of reorganization, and for the good of the American people and the federal workforce, we should start acting like adults in our negotiations. But that has to originate from a president and from a Congress and then it has to respect the transition that would be appropriate. That’s true of Social Security and Medicare, of course, but it’s also true of how you deal with the federal workforce. We’ve been hiring like crazy at a time when we could be changing.”
Issa suggested, for example, that lawmakers could have offered new jobs created by the Transportation Security Administration to U.S. Postal Service employees that are no longer needed. “It was within our purview to say that, yes, a postal worker might be more expensive under their contract, but why did we go out for new hires when we had excess personnel in another area? We could have made those adjustments and said, within the federal workforce, we can have a transition plan. It’s not the postal workers’ problem that we were too dumb to do it, or too lazy or unwilling.”
Issa, whose paternal grandfather was from Lebanon, was also asked Friday whether he agrees with Republican presidential contenders who believe TSA agents should keep closer tabs on Muslim and Arab American air travelers.
“I want law enforcement to be sensible in targeting high risk, but high risk cannot be based on the color of your skin or perception that can’t be backed up by some sensible facts,” Issa said.
“I think assuming that you can pick out a Muslim is pretty far-fetched and more importantly, if that’s all you’re concentrating on, then the really big crimes will be done by blond, blue-eyed women from Belgium who convert and we’ll never see it coming.”
Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost
Further reading:
Rick Perry: Disagreeable federal workers would be reassigned to ‘some really God-awful place’
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