The National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a leading whistleblower advocacy group, has published an Ethics Agenda, urging Congress to implement a series of reforms to protect whistleblowers and close loopholes. NWC has also created an action alert for people to easily contact their Congressional Representatives and President Biden and urge them to act on these reforms.
“Important anti-corruption legislation has been sitting in various Senate and House committees awaiting action for far too long,” NWC’s action alert reads. “Strong ethics laws, based on incentivizing whistleblowers to report frauds, are urgently needed, especially in light of the trillions of dollars in actual or proposed federal spending for COVID-19 relief efforts or infrastructure.” The action alert urges Congress to “pass an effective ethics agenda to protect whistleblowers of all stripes.”
The ethics agenda put forth by NWC enumerates nine crucial reforms:
Confirm Members to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB).
Fix the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act.
Defend COVID-19 Whistleblowers.
Fund the Commodity Whistleblower Program.
Stop the” Repeal by Delay” of the IRS Whistleblower Program.
Pass the False Claims Act Reforms.
Enact Whistleblower Protection for Climate Change and Wildlife Trafficking.
Protect Electric Grid Whistleblowers.
Make National Whistleblower Day Permanent.
NWC states that these initiatives “are central to providing whistleblowers with a powerful and effective framework to fight back against retaliation, make protected and secure disclosures of waste, fraud, and abuse, and protect American taxpayers.” The organization urges individuals to contact their Senators, Representatives, and President Biden and “urge them to take action and pass this Ethics Agenda.”
Writing in The Hill, whistleblower attorney and Chairman of the Board of NWC Stephen M. Kohn recognizes that this Labor Day holiday, thousands of whistleblowers languish without justice in loopholes and delays, failed by the very systems designed to protect and reward their heroic actions.
Kohn emphasizes the reforms of NWC’s ethics agenda as instrumental to protecting and empowering whistleblowers, outlining how each action addresses a shortcoming in the current system.
