Government Funding Transparency Act of 2008
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of this very important commonsense legislation, the Government Funding Transparency Act 2008. I would like to thank, of course, Chairman Towns for his work on the subcommittee, Chairman Waxman for his early and active support on this legislation, and especially to the ranking member, former chairman, Mr. Davis, who we were able to work directly together with over the past days and weeks to make this, as he states, I think a much stronger bill and one that answers many of the concerns that were raised by Mr. Davis, his office, and members of the minority of the committee.
Mr. Speaker, as described, the Government Funding Transparency Act will require that companies who receive more than 80 percent of their income in annual gross revenue from the Federal Government and more than $25 million worth of Federal work in any given fiscal year disclose the salaries of their most highly compensated employees.
This disclosure would be, as Representative Davis noted, posted on an existing OMB Web site, www.USAspending.gov, which was authorized as part of the Federal Funding, Accountability, and Transparency Act, a bipartisan measure passed by the 109th Congress.
As pointed out in a recent GAO report, buying services accounted for 60 percent of the total 2006 procurement dollars. And expenditures on security services, due to our engagement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have forced those service expenditures to increase substantially.
In addition, according to that same Web site, we have seen an increasing number of contracts that weren't competed at all. In fact, in 2000, the amount of contracts not competed was $48 billion, just north of there; and in 2007, 7 years later, that number had ballooned to $112 billion.
And yet with such a substantial increase in government funding going to companies through no-bid processes, these companies are virtually subsidiaries of the United States government taking in 80 to 90, perhaps 100 percent of their revenues from U.S. taxpayers. We don't know enough about these tax companies. We don't know their management practices, their financial statements, or their employment policies. They are often highly and tightly held secrets not subject to public scrutiny.
So it is not surprising, as Chairman Waxman mentioned in October 2007 when the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee brought the CEO of Blackwater before us, one of the largest government contractors, taking in nearly 90 percent of their revenue contracts from Federal contracts, the CEO of that company, Eric Prince, refused to disclose to Congress the amount of profit that company makes or the amount of salary that he took in; yet despite the fact that 90 percent of that salary, 90 percent of the company's revenues, come from the United States' taxpayers.
It's our money. We deserve to know how it's being used. Regardless of your position on this war or any other war, we deserve to know whether or not public funds are being used to unjustly enrich government contractors.
But this principle, as Representative Davis and others pointed out, shouldn't just be applied to these types of private security or service contracts. It should be required of all entities that make the vast amount of their earnings, over 80 percent, from U.S. taxpayer dollars. And I would especially like to thank Representative Davis and Representative Foxx for their advocacy for this principle.
Importantly, it's important to note that this bill will actually only affect a limited number of companies, only those entities that subsist almost entirely on Federal money and only those that are not publicly traded, since public companies who do the lion's share, frankly, of Federal contracting, already disclose executive compensation information.
Mr. Speaker, profit is clearly a powerful motive, and this legislation does nothing to remove this incentive from our Federal contracting structure. But when it comes to private companies like Blackwater and others that would not exist if it wasn't for United States taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers and this Congress should have the information necessary to decide whether we've gone too far in padding the personal pockets of those who feed at the government trough.
As the late Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. I believe this legislation will apply a little bit more sunlight to the Federal funding process.
Again, I thank the chairman and the ranking member for their assistance on this legislation. And I know that this body will agree that as stewards of the people's treasure, we must do everything in our power to make sure it's being spent justly and responsibly. Again, I thank the chairman.
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