Sewell slams intelligence community, votes for retirement security
Published 3:39 pm Friday, May 24, 2019
On Friday, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-AL, ended her week by taking the intelligence community to task over its absence from a diversity and inclusion hearing and backed a proposal that would provide Americans with greater retirement security and reverse an unintended tax on Gold Star families.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, of which Sewell is a member, hosted the diversity and inclusion summit Friday and invited a number of department heads to be involved – none attended.
“While I’m happy that the committee will discuss the issues at hand, I am disappointed that none of the intelligence community agency directors are here to testify today,” Sewell said. “In 1995, 2001 [and] 2003 the committee held similar hearings on the diversity in the intelligence community topics and, at those hearings, the directors of [the] National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) participated as witnesses.”
The hearing, the first on diversity and inclusion in the intelligence community in over a decade, was aimed at tackling discrepancies in the agencies’ hiring practices – while minorities make up roughly 40 percent of the U.S. population, they make up only 25 percent of the intelligence community workforce.
Sewell contends that “diverse skills, perspectives and situations is necessary to effectively meet the multi-faceted, dynamic challenges of security,” adding that the lack of such diversity “Threatens the intelligence community’s ability to most effectively address our nation’s emerging and ongoing threats,” according to a press release.
“It is frustrating to me as a member of this committee who has dedicated a lot of her time to promoting what I consider to be the greatest asset we have in the intelligence community and that is its workforce,” Sewell said. “It is its people. I think all of us know that vision starts from the top, commitment starts from the top and that starts with appearing before a committee that has oversight over that workforce.”
Sewell noted that the CIA’s 2015 Diversity in Leadership study found that agency leaders, managers and supervisors do not prioritize diversity in leadership and that the absence of department heads indicates that “diversity, while a priority, is not a top priority across the intelligence community.”
Also on Friday, Sewell cast a vote in favor of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, which went on to clear the House.
“Almost 60 percent of American do not have any retirement account assets, “ Sewell said. “That means that they have not put away a single dollar for retirement. The SECURE Act expands opportunities for Alabamians to increase their retirement savings by making it easier for small business to offer retirement plans to their employees, providing retirement benefit opportunities to home care workers, allowing long-time, part-time workers to participate in a 401(k) plan and much more. This bill goes a long way in ensuring that Americans can get to the economic security they deserve.”
Along with boosting opportunities for more Americans to participate in retirement plans, the SECURE Act includes a provision that would reverse a tax on Gold Star families imposed through a 2018 Republican tax bill.
“With Memorial Day fast approaching, I was proud that the House overwhelmingly passed a provision I introduced to reverse the tax hike on Gold Star families’ survivor benefits,” Sewell said. “This provision is just one way we can honor those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country and ensure their loved ones get the economic security they deserve.”