Secure Border Initiative Financial Accountability Act of 2006

SECURE BORDER INITIATIVE FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2006)

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6162, the Secure Border Initiative Financial Accountability Act of 2006.

This bipartisan legislation will help to ensure that taxpayer funds dedicated to technologies to secure our Nation's borders are spent efficiently and effectively.

The ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Mr. Thompson, and I have worked for almost a year on this important bill.

Last November, I introduced H.R. 4284, the Secure Border Financial Accountability Act of 2005. I was pleased that Chairman King and Ranking Member Thompson were original cosponsors of that bill.

We also worked to include the language in the border security bill which the Committee on Homeland Security marked up on November 11, 2005. At that time, Mr. Thompson added a key funding trigger to ensure that the Inspector General had the necessary resources to respond quickly to major disasters.

This language ultimately was included in H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, which passed the House on December 16 of that same year. We again worked in a bipartisan manner to include this provision in H.R. 5814, the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act for 2007, which the Committee on Homeland Security reported favorably in July of this year.

But, why is this bill so important? The Homeland Security Subcommittee on Management, Integration, and Oversight, which I chair, has held three hearings over the past year and a half on the existing border technology program.

We found the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System, ISIS, and its remote video surveillance program, was plagued by mismanagement, operational problems and financial waste. On June 16, 2005, our committee heard from the GSA deputy inspector general that electronic surveillance equipment covered only 2 to 4 percent of the border and that over $200 million was paid by the Federal Government for poor, incomplete and never-delivered goods and services.

At our second hearing on December 16, 2005, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General testified that cameras and sensors were not integrated, oversight of contractor performance was ineffective, numerous poles and cameras were never installed along the border, and millions of program dollars remained unspent at the GSA.

Our third hearing on February 16, 2006, examined the disciplinary actions taken by the Department against employees responsible for these problems at ISIS to ensure that those employees would not be involved in any future border technology contracts.

Last Thursday, Secretary Chertoff announced the contract for the technology component of the Secure Border Initiative, known as SBInet. This is a 6-year, multi-billion dollar contract, and it is designed to establish a virtual fence across 6,000 miles of our borders through a mix of poles, cameras, ground-based radar, aircraft and other aerial platforms.

My subcommittee intends to hold a fourth hearing on November 15 to review the SBInet contract. The purpose of this bill is to prevent the same type of financial mismanagement of ISIS from taking place in SBInet.

Specifically, this bill directs the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to review each contract action related to the Department's Secure Border Initiative that is a contracting amount of $20 million or more. This contract review will determine whether each contract action fully complies with cost requirements, performance objectives, and timelines.

The bill further requires that the Homeland Security Inspector General report to the Secretary of Homeland Security on cost overruns, significant delays in contract execution, lack of rigorous contract management, insufficient financial oversight, and other high-risk business practices.

The Secretary of Homeland Security is then required to notify the Congress and take immediate steps to rectify the problems within 30 days.

To carry out this vigorous oversight, the bill includes a provision by Mr. Thompson that would authorize additional funds. SBInet will involve numerous large and small Federal contractors to implement the technology required to successfully secure our Nation's borders.

We look forward to working with the chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, Mr. Tom Davis, in the coming months to ensure that we have the best oversight process in place to ensure SBInet is cost effective.

A ``yes'' vote on this legislation will send a strong message to the contractor and to the Department that Congress intends to ``hold their feet to the fire'' in fulfilling these contract requirements.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ROGERS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I would like to sum up by emphasizing that it is critically important for the Members to recognize that we need to put these kinds of accountability measures in place so that we can ensure that as we go forward with the massive expenditures we are going to make to secure our borders that we don't have a repeat of the waste, fraud, and abuse that we have seen in the past.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge an ``aye'' vote for H.R. 6162.

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