There are 3 million adults in the United States who have been stripped of elemental rights of participation in our democratic process.
They cannot run for office. They cannot hold office in political parties. They cannot work in campaigns.
Their crime? They are federal government employees, ranging from file clerks to highway engineers, librarians to doctors, mail carriers to meat inspectors.
Congress is now moving to lift some of the restrictions, rewriting a 54-year-old law known as the Hatch Act. It’s the right thing to do.
The act, which strictly curtails political involvement by federal employees, was passed after reports that some New Deal-agency workers had been pressured to ante up campaign dollars to keep their jobs.
Despite those origins, the law as it stands now allows federal employees to make political contributions; it also permits on-the-job political statements such as wearing campaign buttons.
The proposed rewrites-in somewhat different forms in the Senate and the House-would bar office-hours political activity. But either version would restore to employees some individual rights of political participation-of their own choice, on their own time.
Backers of the Hatch Act-in 1993 as well as in 1939, when it became law-argue that it is needed to maintain a “de-politicized” federal bureaucracy and to shield workers from improper influence. They fear that lifting any bans would give more leverage to employee unions.
These are reasonable concerns, but not ones that justify denial of basic freedoms to the entire class of government workers. For one thing, it would be naive to think political influence never seeps into the ranks of the federal work force now, or that federal unions don’t already wield considerable clout on Capitol Hill. For another, existing civil service protections should provide sufficient refuge from undue political pressure.
Loosening up the Hatch Act has wide, bipartisan support in Congress. A revamp was passed by large margins in 1990 but vetoed by President George Bush. With President Clinton pledging to sign such a bill, one measure swept through the House this month on a 333-86 vote. The Senate is expected soon to take up its own, somewhat more restrictive version.
With such backing in place, it’s understandable that supporters are moving quickly. They should slow down just long enough, however, to include exceptions that retain political isolation for positions where even a whiff of partisan favoritism can be thorny. These include prosecutors and key law-enforcement personnel such as FBI agents and IRS investigators.
Any time someone wants to throw limits around basic constitutional freedoms, there must be a powerful, overriding reason for doing so. For most federal workers, there isn’t.
