Accountability in Contracting Act

Floor Speech

ACCOUNTABILITY IN CONTRACTING ACT

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Chair, I want to thank Chairman Waxman for yielding.

I have always been told that one of the basic responsibilities of management is to effectively manage and account for the resources of the corporation, of the country, of the business. And, of course, in this instance we are talking about the United States Government; and all of us are shareholders, are stakeholders.

And I must confess that when I look at the record of our chief management team, we have come up woefully short. We have seen raw examples of waste, fraud, and abuse: no paper trails, no real rationale for why a contract or contracts were let.

And I want to commend Chairman Waxman for effectively laying out a bill of particulars against these current practices. The hearings that were held on contracting accountability were so revealing. As a matter of fact, much of the information that we saw, we just couldn't believe in terms of contracts that were let and nobody could tell what had happened as a result of the contract, what was the work that was done, who did it.

This legislation will limit the length of noncompetitive contracts, minimize no-bid contracts, maximize fixed-price contracts, require public disclosure of justification of no-bid contracts, disclose contractor overcharges, and promote ethics in procurement which is so important.

Every dollar spent by this Government should get maximum return for the shareholders. We have not seen that in our contracting policies and practices. And I commend the chairman not only for the oversight but also for the corrective action which we are about to take today by passing this legislation.

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