Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about a reform we did make. Two-and-a-half years ago in the wake of the problems in the bank and the post office, I served as a member of a bipartisan task force which drafted House Resolution 423, an unprecedented effort to totally eliminate politics and patronage from the administration of the House support operations. I am saddened that on this day of reform, the new majority proposes a change to go back from professional management and businesslike personnel policies to the discredited patronage system.

[TIME: 1720] However, that is what they are proposing and they have already started to implement it.

Let me remind Members of what we have accomplished. We have created a Director of Non-Legislative and Financial Services, with a mandate to sweep the House clean of waste and fraud and inefficiency. We have provided that both the majority and minority parties must agree on the selection of the director, so that only skill mattered, not politics.

Today we turn back from that in very short time, and we have already started with a totally partisan person to administer the House.

We had an inspector general who was going to report to a bipartisan subcommittee. That is all gone, so there is no more oversight in a bipartisan way of the things that happen in this House.

Mr. Speaker, 2 1/2 years ago in the wake of the Sergeant-at-Arms Bank and the Post Office affairs, I served as a member of the bipartisan task force which drafted House Resolution 423, an unprecedented effort to totally eliminate politics and patronage from the administration of House support operations.

I am shocked and saddened that on this day of reform, that the new majority would propose in this package of rules changes to move back from professional management and business-like personnel policies to the discredited patronage system. Yet that's what they are proposing and have already begun to implement.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind you what we had accomplished.

We created a Director of Non-legislative and Financial Services with the mandate to sweep the House clean of waste, fraud, and inefficiency. We provided that both the majority and minority parties must agree on the selection of the Director to ensure that only relevant experience and skills would count, not the politics of those who applied.

Today the new majority proposes to turn the clock back to an era of one-party partisan control over everything in the House from the payroll clerks to the telephone operators.

And our reform did not stop there. We created an independent Office of Inspector General to be directed and report to a new bipartisan Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight with equal representation from each party.

Today the new majority kills that bipartisan subcommittee and returns to a partisan oversight committee.

Is this reform? Why is the new majority rolling back the bold and totally bipartisan approach to managing House support services? One can only speculate that they were only giving lip service to bipartisan professionalism. Now that they are in power, they are abandoning professionalism and grabbing for the spoils of victory.

I believe history will judge harshly those who eat their words from the past so easily without any sense of their hypocritical vote to return to the discredited spoils system.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this rollback to the bad old days.

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