Exclusive — Marsha Blackburn on Federal Hiring Freezes, Firings: ‘It Is Time to Be Accountable’

US Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, speaks during the first day of the 2
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

“It is time to be accountable” is the message Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has to critics of the federal firings and hiring freezes, walking through why this is essential during a Tuesday appearance on Breitbart News Daily.

“What we are doing is saying to federal employees, let’s be accountable,” she said, acknowledging that there are “thousands of fabulous people who work diligently every day for the federal government.”

“And under my DOGE Act, those individuals would be elevated, they would be promoted, and they would be paid more. What we are saying is to all of these federal employees that are still working remote, that are showing up at the office a day or two a week … you’re going to show up,” she said.

“Your promotions are not going to be based on how long you’ve been sitting in your chair,” she emphasized, explaining that promotions would instead be based on productivity.

“And we are freezing federal hiring until such a time as we can kind of sort this out. Everyone knows of federal employees who have moved away from Washington, DC to other parts of the country,” she said. “They’ve been working remote.”

Blackburn noted that they also know of federal employees working another job as well in addition to their remote federal job, which she said is not fair to American taxpayers.

“We are simply saying it is time to be accountable. Is time to bring some transparency. And if the taxpayer is footing, the bill, the taxpayer needs to know how that money is being spent,” she continued, supporting reform of these agencies in question.

She called to “give people the opportunity to move on and do something else, and then reform those agencies, use technology, use different capabilities that maybe were not in existence 20 or 30 years ago when they took their job.”

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“And it is something that can be handled by automating, and let’s look at paperwork and case work. All of this should be on the standardized form that can be electronically submitted, rather than having to fill out a paper form, mail it in, have somebody open the envelope, put it in the stack, and someday someone gets to it,” she said.

“Algorithmically, if that is electronically submitted, we should be able to give you an answer within hours — not days, weeks or months,” she said, using the backlog at the VA as an example.

“We have a case backlog of 954,000 cases for veterans’ health care and benefits. Many of these, close to 300,000 of those, are cases that have been languishing for over 120 days. So if you were to standardize, electronically submit, algorithmically evaluate, our veterans should be able to get answers within hours, not within months or years,” she added.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

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