Hoyer Remarks at NTEU Federal Employee Rally on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) joined Members of Congress, members of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), and union leaders at The Standing Strong to Serve the Nation Rally on Capitol Hill to protest the administration’s attacks on federal employees. Below is a transcript of his remarks:
"Neither rain, nor snow, or [the] dead of night will keep us from our rounds. That’s what every employee says every morning as they get up and go to work. Now we have a new ‘guru’ at OMB. And what he says is, ‘I want every employee to wake up and not want to go to work.’ He says, as a policy, what he wants to do is to traumatize every one of you and every one of us. What he doesn't know [is] if he does that, he’s going to traumatize every American that you serve.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you and I both know something, that what they’re doing is not legal, not constitutional. Madam President, you and I have had that discussion. So, I wanted to be out here. It’s not so cold, but it’s not so pleasant. But it’s much more unpleasant what is being done to our federal employees. It is much more unpleasant [that] the services that will not be done.
"Now DOGE, the last ‘E’ is for efficiency. If you are going to make the government the most inefficient you can do, you would follow the policies that are being followed. Absolutely. Because you have scared the living hell out of every federal employee thinking about, ‘Am I going to have a job tomorrow?’ We want them to be thinking about, ‘what has the Congress asked me to do for the American people.’ Not whether ‘I'm going to be fired tomorrow,’ illegally, by the way.
“So, I want to thank all of you. I got a lot of my colleagues here. They’re under umbrellas, you’re under umbrellas, some of you aren’t under umbrellas. A great courtesy of NTEU. So, you keep the faith. ‘You keep on walking; you keep on talking.’ That’s John Lewis. That’s Civil Rights. We don't want to turn over the federal government or any government to political hacks. We want people who are committed not to party, not to [a] president, but to the American people. And that's what you are. God bless you. Keep on keeping on.”