Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is enjoying being dictator of his own little fiefdom, getting reporters arrested for trying to ask him questions and barring his staff from talking to Congress. Which isn't going over well even with Republican Congress.
The May 3 memo from HHS Secretary Tom Price’s chief of staff, Lance Leggitt, instructed employees not to have “any communications” with members of Congress or their staffs without first consulting the department’s assistant secretary for legislation. Leggitt’s memo said he was only restating a long-standing policy on congressional relations and gave eight examples of contacts needing approval, including requests for calls, briefings, hearings and oversight.
The 10-sentence memo drew an incensed reply from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairmen, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They asked Price to clarify in writing Leggitt’s communication as soon as possible. […]
“In its current form, employees are likely to interpret it as a prohibition, and will not necessarily understand their rights,” they wrote in their letter to Price.
“Protecting whistleblowers who courageously speak out is not a partisan issue—it is critical to the functioning of our government,” added the lawmakers.
Unless, of course, it might be a whistleblower in the Justice Department with knowledge of Russian activities in the Trump campaign. But that's nit-picking, right? That there's even a glimmer of push-back on this administration from congressional Republicans suggests that the institution isn't wholly broken yet.
Because this executive branch clearly is. What Price's chief of staff called "long-standing policy" is not. And in fact, that demand is illegal, says Liz Hempowicz, policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, without clear explication in the memo that employees have whistleblower rights.