Rep. Maxine Waters bill to eliminate background checks for contractors raises serious questions.
By Rick Manning
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. David Trone (D-MD) have introduced a bill that would block certain federal grants from going to federal contractors who conduct criminal background checks, or even “inquire” about the criminal history of an applicant. This outrageous proposal reveals the woke left’s dangerous agenda. These radicals who want to defund the police and strip them of legal protections now want to give criminals access to government sensitive information, even our national mint.
Under this measure, every defense contractor who conducts background checks could have their contracts stripped. As a side note, if there are any federal contractors who aren’t currently conducting background checks on applicants, then they should have their government contracts taken away for incompetence.
What could go wrong? A few things come to mind. We could have defense secrets stolen, money syphoned from the U.S. mint, and Drug Enforcement Agency contractors moonlighting for drug cartels.
While Rep. Trone, who is relatively new to the House, can be forgiven for not knowing recent House of Representatives history, Waters cannot. In 2017, an investigation came to a head focused on a foreign network of Information Technology specialists hired by the geniuses in the Democratic Party leadership in the House of Representatives. Then House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, laid out the concerns in a Feb. 3, 2017 letter to the Committee overseeing House operations writing,
“Based upon the evidence gathered to this point, we have concluded the employees are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents…This could have resulted in Member data being accessed by someone unknown and unauthorized by the offices.”
While Irving’s letter seriously understated the seriousness of the situation as House Member email correspondence had been breached subjecting everything from policy discussions to personnel matters to scrutiny by foreign spymasters, it would seem at least obvious that background checks for anyone who touches any government information that comes over a computer should be mandatory for security purposes.
Apparently, Representatives Waters and Trone can’t be expected to worry about little things like embezzlement and national security interests when the quest for equity is afoot. And since Trone came from the private sector as the multi-millionaire owner of the retail chain Total Wine and More, I’m certain that his corporate accounting team is not just hired off the street without determining if they have a history of stealing from their previous employers, even if he is willing to accept petty theft at his cash registers due to unwise hiring practices.
But that is his business. Bu when it comes to the people’s business, taxpayers have a right to expect that contractors and their employees are not criminals, proven liars, thieves or committers of hate crimes. I guess rather than an official background check, the government could just rely upon the woke Twitter mob to vet prospective employees based upon innuendo rather than fact.
Somehow that thought doesn’t soothe me.
Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government.
