The House voted 221-203 to pass legislation on Thursday bolstering protections for federal employees who blow the whistle on fraud, waste and abuse.
The bill would increase whistleblower protections for federal employees, make sure that whistleblowers have due process and equitable relief and expand whistleblower protections to federal employees not previously covered, among other things. It is one of several bills the House took up this week to improve government transparency and accountability.
“Congress relies on whistleblowers to exercise our constitutional oversight responsibilities, safeguard taxpayer dollars, improve federal programs, and even save lives,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who introduced the bill, said in a press release. “Today’s bipartisan passage of the Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act brings us one step closer to ensuring that any federal employee who steps forward to report wrongdoing is protected from retaliation. I hope the Senate will quickly take up this commonsense bill.”
There is no companion version for the Whistleblower Protection Improvement Act in the Senate to date. However, the bill is included in both the House and Senate versions of the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a massive government bill that came largely in response to issues raised under the Trump administration The House passed the bill in December 2021 and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., was the only Republican to vote for...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...