Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2018

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, let me, first of all, thank my good friend, Mr. Katko, who is the original sponsor; and I am proud to be an original cosponsor of this legislation. We serve on the Homeland Security Committee and have oversight over the Secret Service, as does the aspects of this legislation, as relates to Judiciary has oversight as well. So ensuring that our men and women, who put their lives on the line daily, are protected is an important initiative. As I said earlier, I am proud to be an original cosponsor, along with my colleague from New York (Mr. Katko).

The Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017 is intended to provide overtime pay for employees of the United States Secret Service. Currently, the premium pay for protective services, under the Overtime Pay for Protective Services Act of 2016, has severe earning limitations, or otherwise caps, which many of these men and women have reached.

Due to earnings limitations put in place through 5 U.S.C. 5547, many Secret Service employees are not receiving timely or full payment for the hours they work. The requirements of protective operations directly contrast with the intent of an annual pay cap, as the protective mission requires continued, uninterrupted coverage for our protectees, beyond the control of the Secret Service. I think that is an important point.

And I want my colleagues to know that I wholly support that our protectees are protected wherever they go. But I would be remiss if I did not express my concern on the number of trips that the Secret Service today has had to make on outings for entertainment, Mar-a-Lago, which I think is over 100 times, and the enormous amount of money and burden that is being placed on the Federal Government.

This does not mean that I do not want these individuals to be compensated. And might I stop for a moment to thank the Secret Service, who I have known and have seen working over the years that I have served in the United States Congress in many different ways. Let me personally thank them for their service and for their professional service, dedicated service, and longstanding service and commitment to sacrificing their life for their protectee.

I would say that this problem often requires individuals to work over the amount of premium pay, for which they are able to be legally paid, due to the annual cap. We have seen the extent to which Secret Service members are stretched in this administration alone. Providing protection for the President, his family members, and other high officials requires depth within the agency to ensure protectees are covered as well as their respective posts when pulled away. As I made the point, these various family members and President go in many ways off of the path of their government service related to the people of the United States.

It is my hope that we are able to eventually work collaboratively on a more permanent fix to this problem since the Secret Service cannot administratively control protective overtime, which is dependent on the schedules of the protectees. Raising the pay cap will aid the Secret Service in reducing attrition rates and retaining personnel, which is what this bill purports to do. I truly want to make sure that happens.

Exit interview data indicates the pay cap issue is the number one concern among employees leaving the Secret Service. We must ensure that we are employing the best available candidates when dealing with the protection of America's highest diplomats. Therefore, pay should not be a deterrence in the recruitment and/or retention of Secret Service agents, and it is crucial that we retain them.

Departing employees said raising the pay cap would have had an effect on their decision to leave, and they would have stayed. They are leaving the Secret Service for other positions in the Federal Government with equal pay and less travel.

The U.S. Secret Service is currently protecting a historic number of protectees--about 25 percent more protectees--than during the Obama administration. In comparison to the previous five Presidential administrations--Bush 41 to Obama--for the first 6 months in office, Trump administration Secret Service protectees had more travel stops and travel days than any other President.

As such, the operational tempo for protective activities have remained higher than normal. Protective overtime hours for special agents are about 15 to 20 percent higher when compared to CY 2015, the last non-Presidential campaign year.

For CY 2017, as of 9-30-17, the Secret Service anticipates approximately 1,200 personnel will exceed the statutory pay cap.

The costs related to protective overtime in excess of the pay cap for CY 2017 is estimated at $10.5 million. The same costs are projected for 2018, if the protective tempo remains unchanged.

I, therefore, support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Any way that we can help protect the protectees, and keep these well-experienced, committed, dedicated agents, willing to sacrifice their lives, from leaving, so that we can also recruit, is a vital step forward. I hope not only is this bill passed by the House, but I also hope passed quickly by the Senate to be able to be signed by the President of the United States.

Ensuring that our men and women, who put their lives on the line daily, are protected is an important initiative. I am proud to be an original co-sponsor along with my colleague Mr. Katko from New York.

``The Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017'' is intended to provide overtime pay for employees of the United States Secret Service.

Currently, the premium pay for protective services under the ``Overtime Pay for Protective Services Act of 2016'' has severe earning limitations, or otherwise caps, which many of these men and women have reached.

Due to earnings limitations put in place through 5 U.S.C. 5547, many Secret Service employees are not receiving timely or full payment for the hours they work.

The requirements of protective operations directly contrast with the intent of an annual pay cap, as the protective mission requires continued, uninterrupted coverage for our protectees, beyond the control of the United States Secret Service.

This often requires individuals to work over the amount of premium pay for which they are able to be legally paid due to the annual cap.

We have seen the extent to which the Secret Service members are stretched in this administration alone. Providing protection for the President, his family members and other high officials require depth within the agency to ensure protectees are covered as well as their respective posts when pulled away.

It is my hope that we are able to eventually work collaboratively on a more permanent fix to this problem since the Secret Service cannot administratively control protective overtime, which is dependent on the schedules of the protectees.

Raising the pay cap will aid the Secret Service in reducing attrition rates and retaining personnel, which is what this bill purports to do.

Exit interview data indicates the pay cap issue is the number #1 concern among employees leaving the Secret Service. We must ensure that we are employing the best available candidates when dealing with the protection of America's highest diplomats. Therefore, pay should not be deterrence in the recruitment and/or retention of Secret Service agents.

Departing employees said raising the pay cap would have had an effect on their decision to leave the agency. (They are leaving the Secret Service for other positions in the federal government with equal pay and less travel.)

The USSS is currently protecting a historical high number of protectees--about 25 percent more protectees than during the Obama Administration.

In comparison to the previous five presidential administrations (Bush 41 to Obama), for the first six months in office, Trump Administration Secret Service protectees had more travel stops and travel days than any other.

As such, the operational tempo for protective activities has remained higher than normal. Protective overtime hours for special agents are about 15 to 20 percent higher when compared to CY 2015--the last non- presidential campaign year.

For CY 2017, as of 9/30/17, the Secret Services anticipates approximately 1,200 personnel will exceed the statutory pay cap.

The costs related to protective overtime in excess of the pay cap for CY 2017 is estimated at $10.5 million. The same costs are projected for CY 2018, if the protective tempo remains unchanged.

I therefore, support this bill and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, we must do everything we can to protect our United States Secret Service personnel and ensure an effective process for recruitment and retention of these agents.

These agents play a vital role in our democratic system both here at home and abroad. Their keen attention to details and adequate response to dangerous situations around the world cannot be measured in dollar signs.

Beyond protecting the President, Vice-President, their families and other identified individuals, the Secret Service plays a vital role in representing the United States interest around the world through criminal investigation activities that span the gamut from anti- counterfeiting operations to now encompassing financial crimes, identity theft, counterfeiting, computer fraud, and computer-based attacks on the nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure, among other areas.

For all these reasons, I therefore, support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the chairman and ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me acknowledge Mr. Cummings for his leadership on this legislation. I believe the combination of Members who are sponsoring this legislation and the work of the Oversight and Government Reform, Homeland Security, and Judiciary Committees clearly speak to almost the crisis of the issue and what we are dealing with.

As we come to a close, Mr. Speaker, I am hoping that my colleagues will vote for this legislation in resounding numbers and I hope that the Senate will hotline this legislation so that it can immediately get to the desk of the President.

I would also ask that we recognize that we must do everything we can to protect our United States Secret Service personnel and ensure an effective process for recruitment and retention of these agents.

I am glad there is an element in this legislation that will allow for a review of all of these issues and that the Congress will have a role in assessing how we can work with the Secret Service agency to improve its performance, its retention, and certainly to say to those hardworking agents that we appreciate them, by way of compensation.

These agents play a vital role in our democratic system both here at home and abroad. Their keen attention to details and adequate response to dangerous situations around the world cannot be measured in dollar signs.

Beyond protecting the President, Vice President, their families, and other identified individuals, the Secret Service plays a vital role in representing the United States' interests around the world through criminal investigation activities that span the gamut from anticounterfeiting operations to now encompassing financial crimes; identity theft, which has exponentially grown in the United States; counterfeiting; computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on the Nation's financial, banking, and telecommunications infrastructure, among other areas.

Congress is standing up to make its voice known and to make appropriate changes.

I think it is appropriate for the administration in this instance, the Commander in Chief, to stand up as well and review the extensive travel and the burdens that are being placed on the Secret Service agents and their families. They are not complaining, but I think it behooves any good leader to look at what can be improved and what can be corrected in order to ensure the astuteness, the excellence, and the safety and security of the protectees and those agents who are out there on the line sacrificing or willing to sacrifice their life.

For all of these reasons, I therefore support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote for this legislation, H.R. 3731, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, we all know that the United States Secret Service is one of the Federal Government's premier law enforcement agencies.

The agency's critical mission is to protect the President, his family, and other senior government officials. Agency personnel may also provide protection at high-profile events. It has a zero-fail mission; therefore, it is vital that the Secret Service is fully staffed with nothing but the best.

Unfortunately, the agency has faced tremendous staffing problems. The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a bipartisan report in 2015, finding the Secret Service has faced challenges related to hiring and retaining personnel.

The report states that the staffing crisis threatens to jeopardize its critical mission. Staffing issues have persisted, although the agency has implemented a series of reforms to help get its hiring and attrition problems under control.

The consequence of these hiring and attrition problems is that the agency does not have enough personnel to fulfill its zero fail protective mission. This means existing personnel are working excessive overtime.

With all the overtime, many Secret Service personnel have reached the cap on premium pay set in law. As a result, agents are not paid for overtime hours if doing so would result in compensation above the cap during any biweekly pay period. These max-outs, as they are known, contribute to the agency's low morale and unsurprisingly cause the rate of attrition to spike.

Congress first lifted the pay cap for the Secret Service in 2016 to help the agency handle the demands of staffing the Presidential campaign. However, nearly 1,300 employees are at risk of exceeding the pay cap in 2017.

Due to the extraordinary staffing problems facing the agency, this bill extends the pay cap waiver provided last year until the end of 2018. Employees will receive compensation up to the basic pay currently given to members of the Executive Schedule, Level II.

Every Secret Service employee who has exceeded the cap or who is at risk of doing so because of excessive overtime will receive additional compensation under this bill.

I want to be clear. This bill is narrowly targeted to fix a problem currently facing the agency and does so in a timely manner.

The Secret Service cannot continue to rely on expensive overtime, and Congress fully expects the agency to get its hiring attrition problems under control. To this end, the bill also requires a report by the Government Accountability Office focused on the Secret Service's implementation of recommendations found in the 2014 Protective Mission Panel report.

Mr. Speaker, the recommendations, which include reforming the recruiting and hiring process, hiring additional personnel, and implementing a zero tolerance disciplinary system, are instructive and will help the Secret Service develop a world class human resource system.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I would like to thank the House Judiciary Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, along with the Oversight and Government Reform Committee on putting forth this important legislation and bringing it to the floor in a timely manner.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the extra time and I urge all Members to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3731, the Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017, because I believe in the need to pay the hardworking men and women of the United States Secret Service for the critical work that they perform in dedication to the security of America's leaders.

While most Americans know the Secret Service for its role in protecting the President and First Family, many are unaware of the additional substantial roles and countless hours worked by special agents, uniformed division officers, technical personnel, and intelligence professionals. These jobs require extensive travel, often on short notice, as well as sometimes working multiple weeks in a row without a day off, because the security of our Nation's leaders depend on our constant vigilance.

This legislation demonstrates an important recognition of the men and women who wake up every day to dedicate their lives to the protection of America's leadership and financial systems. This agency has struggled to improve employee morale in recent years, due, in large part, to strict overtime pay caps that prevent adequate compensation for their work. It is very common, nowadays, in the Secret Service for agents, starting as early as June, to be working multiple hours a week of overtime, and sometimes as many as over 100 hours a month for free because they have reached the cap.

This, in turn, leads to challenges in retention and recruitment, further exacerbating staffing shortages. In 2017, the agency estimates that 1,200 employees at Secret Service will exceed the statutory pay cap, losing approximately $10 million in overtime pay, unless we, in Congress, step up.

I wish to thank each of the bipartisan cosponsors for their support of this bill, which took the cooperation of multiple committees to bring to the floor. And I want to thank my colleague, Ms. Jackson Lee, for her continued support on bipartisan measures. It is a sign that when you join hands across the aisle, good things can happen.

In particular, I thank Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee for bringing this legislation up today, as well as Chairman Gowdy and Ranking Member Cummings of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee for their support. I also thank my colleague, Mr. Rutherford, for managing this bill on the floor today. And I thank Chairman McCaul, Ranking Member Thompson, and Ranking Member Watson Coleman of the Homeland Security Committee for their recognition of this legislation's importance to the Secret Service and for their support.

Further, I would like to explicitly thank two staffers who were truly instrumental in coordinating the movement of this bill: Kevin Ortiz of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Robert Parmiter of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, this bill provides overdue relief to an agency whose dedication knows no bounds. As we enjoy this holiday season, I can think of no better Christmas gift to the hardworking men and women at the Secret Service than the fair compensation that is owed to them for their hard work in securing our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, for this reason, I strongly urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, and I urge the Senate to quickly take up and pass this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3731) to provide overtime pay for employees of the United States Secret Service, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3731, currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3731, the Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017.

This bipartisan legislation was introduced by my distinguished colleague, Mr. Katko, and negotiated between the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It would make small, but significant, changes to the Federal law to ensure that the men and women of the United States Secret Service are fairly compensated for performing their duties.

This bill is necessary because, under current law, many Secret Service agents have hit the lawful cap that restricts overtime pay in some circumstances. This means that the brave men and women standing post, for example, at 2 a.m. in the morning are doing so for free. This is, without question, an untenable situation.

H.R. 3731 makes two important changes to the law to address this problem.

First, it raises the overtime cap to ensure that these agents are paid.

Second, it includes a reporting requirement, directing the Government Accountability Office to study the

Service's implementation of the recommendations of the Protective Mission Panel, or PMP. This change is intended to help address the recruitment and retention issues at the Secret Service.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation will ensure that the Secret Service is able to recruit and retain an elite group of dedicated law enforcement officers. This is an issue that rises above party affiliation, or ideology. The protection of the President, the First Family, and others is something that, obviously, we all should want as American citizens.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Katko), my good friend, and sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Jody B. Hice), who is a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, I have no other Members to speak on this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas for helping to bring this bill to the floor today. I congratulate my good friend from New York, Mr. Katko, on this legislation. It is going to be very important to our men and women of the Secret Service who put their lives on the line every day in dedication to their service.

Mr. Speaker, I want to encourage all of my colleagues to support H.R. 3731, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3731, the Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017.

The United States Secret Service is operating under tremendous demands with very limited resources. The agency is tasked with protecting a large presidential family that travels frequently around the world. This year, members of the Trump family have traveled to Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, among other destinations. The Secret Service provides protection on all of these trips, in addition to protecting the president himself, and each of these trips requires the Secret Service to incur significant costs, including travel, lodging, and costs associated with coordinating with local security entities, embassies, and other overseas partners. The Trump family does not reimburse the Federal government for costs associated with protecting family members on these trips, even when they are made in pursuit of the Trump Organization's business interests and to promote the Trump brand.

The scope of the Secret Service's protective mission, along with other agency activities such as investigating and preventing counterfeiting, has created a hole in the agency's budget. At a June 8, 2017, hearing before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation and Protective Security, Secret Service Director Randolph ``Tex'' Alles testified that the agency's budget is ``$200 million to $300 million a year short of what would be required'' to fulfill its protective and investigative missions more effectively.

This bill will not solve the Secret Service's budget gap, but it will prevent Secret Service agents from having to bear the brunt of challenges they did not create. Many Secret Service agents have hit their overtime pay limits and are unable to receive further compensation despite having to work additional hours given the agency's expanded mission. Such a system is unfair to the agents, who work difficult jobs with long shifts and uncompromising schedules even when they are being fairly compensated.

H.R. 3731 would allow the Secret Service to pay agents for hours they have worked, which is the least we can do. I urge the Senate to pass this bill as soon as possible.