Buy American/Support Feds

A fresh face on the Hill talks about stimulating the economy and federal workers

By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

By all accounts, freshman Representative Gerry Connolly is hitting the ground running. With assignments on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Budget Committee, he tells FederalNewsRadio, two of his biggest priorities are the economy and federal workers.

The two, he says, naturally go together.

This reinvestment and recovery act is designed to help… stabilize the economy, put people back to work, get credit flowing again, and reinstill confidence among consumers in going forward. …Obviously, federal agencies are going to play a very prominent role in helping to make all of that happen.

Connolly says one of the possible sticking points in the bill, the Buy American provision, makes sense on the surface, but carrying it out is another matter. He points to the Washington area’s transportation needs as an example.

We have to buy rail cars, the Metro, to be able to expand capacity and upgrade the system. Metro cars are not made in the United States. There is no manufacturing capacity left in the United States to get rail cars for a Metro system like ours, so we have to go to Canada or Italy to purchase those rail cars. So we have to be careful when we’re looking at Buy American. The intention is good: we want to stimulate the U.S. economy, the whole world benefits from that, but I think we have to take a little bit of care about having rigid provisions that actually have the unintended consequence of preventing us from doing some of the good things we want to do.

With respect to the federal workforce, Connolly tells the Federal Drive he’s “looking at a lot of legislation, some of which is very familiar to your listeners.”

    FERS – “(F)or example, trying to make sure that the federal employees who return to federal government service can get credit for previous years of service though the Federal Employee Retirement System. I’ve joined with Congressman (Jim) Moran (D-Va.) in introducing legislation to that effect.”

    Premium Conversion – “I’m working with Congressman (Chris) Van Hollen (D-MD) and (Republican) Congressman (Frank) Wolf from Virginia on premium conversion… which will allow federal and military retirees to pay health premiums with pre-tax dollars like other federal workers do currently, which saves the average federal worker about $435 a year.”

    Whistleblower Protection – “Federal whistleblower protection was stripped out of the stimulus bill by the Senate. We need to proceed with a separate piece of legislation then to protect federal whistleblowers as we move forward.”

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio – Buy American: Boost for workers or bust for trade?

Gerry Connolly – http://connolly.house.gov

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