Watch: Katie Porter debunks Lauren Boebert's attack on federal workers at House hearing
Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) debunked claims made by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) during a House Oversight hearing on Thursday.
The debate between Boebert and Porter began after the former claimed that 20 to 30 percent of federal workers didn't log into work "on any given day" between March and Dec. of 2020, citing a leaked memo. Boebert went on to claim that federal workers no longer have to report their vacations as time off and that all they have to do is claim to be working from home "while at a swim-up bar in Cabo."
The Office of Personnel Management director, Kiran Ahuja, said that she took issue with the characterization and that there haven't been any policy changes that would allow that and that all employees must chart their time.
Boebert claimed that she had evidence of more than 25 percent of workers not logging into work. "It's in this leaked document!" she insisted.
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Ahuja, again, disputed the claim. "You're citing what was happening in the last administration, and I can't speak to that particular incident," she explained.
Boebert asked why she didn't have all of that data, which Ahuja said was gathered by the managers and agencies themselves.
"Do you not oversee those agencies?" Boebert asked.
"We oversee personnel policies," said Ahuja, trying to explain to Boebert her office isn't the correct place for that data.
That's when Porter stepped in, quoting the so-called "leaked VPN report" that 25 percent of Health and Human Services workers didn't log into work.
"I just want to flag for everyone here, that VPN and using VPN login as a way to measure employee engagement and productivity is notoriously inaccurate and misleading," Porter explained. "It does not necessarily reflect an employee's access to their email internet, they can be working on Microsoft Word, drafting a document, they can be in Excel putting in data without being connected to the internet at all."
See the full exchange below or at the link here.
porter vs boebert www.youtube.com