PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Jan 10, 2018
Veterans, Employees, and Taxpayers Protection Act of 2017 or the VET Protection Act of 2017
This bill directs the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to track the use of official time by VA employees without using estimates or time ranges.
Official time is time granted to an employee under federal labor-management relations provisions to perform representational or consultative functions during which the employee would otherwise be in a duty status.
Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.
The bill prohibits: (1) a VA employee from using official time to carry out political or lobbying activities; (2) specified health care employees, probationary employees, or employees above a certain salary level from using official time for any purpose; and (3) any VA employee from spending more than 25% of the time such employee would otherwise be in a duty status on official time.
An exclusive bargaining agreement shall allow a VA employee to terminate a voluntary dues allotment at any time.
A covered VA employee shall serve a two-year probationary period, after which the employee's supervisor shall determine within 90 days whether or not the appointment is permanent. A covered employee is any individual appointed to a permanent position within the competitive service or the Senior Executive Service and does not include specified health care practitioners.
People & committees
Sen. Cruz, Ted [R-TX] · R–TX
Legislative record
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Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
Text links open the official source. We currently store references to these documents.
Source last updated: Aug 11, 2025. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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