Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I am extremely pleased that the appropriators and this chairman have included a requirement that discretionary grants awarded by the Department of Energy must be disclosed to the House and the Senate in a timely manner, and they must include information about where these funds are going.

This is a very positive step forward towards greater transparency and greater ability for this body to have oversight over agencies in the millions of dollars that are being spent on grants.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment that I am offering perfects that information about those grants and their ability to be disclosed. In addition to the money, where it would go, and whom it would go towards, it is critical that we know how many entities actually competed for these awards and how the winner was actually selected, so that we know the full transparency of the process itself.

Agencies have a tremendous amount of discretion, and they provide millions of dollars to grantees. It is incredibly important that Congress fulfills their responsibility of oversight. Shining a light on how these decisions will be made will allow for critical independent assessments of how the DOE spends its money.

Mr. Chairman, these additions I suggest are relatively minor, but it will go a long way to giving Congress greater data on how the Department of Energy functions with their grant process.

I applaud the committee for acknowledging how important disclosure is for this agency and for all accountability, and I hope that this is a positive sign of how we will handle oversight for all agencies and for all grants.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Chairman, I would say this is not about Alaska. Alaska is a tremendous State that I have personally visited. I have not had an opportunity to live there, as my colleague has, obviously. But this is not about Alaska; this is about duplication in government efficiency and how we actually deliver services to these agencies.

In 2004, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget wrote that the Commission's activities were duplicative of other Federal programs that address the same needs and provide the same types of assistance.

In 2009, President Obama's OMB referred to the Denali Commission as duplicative, redundant, unnecessary, and stated there was no evidence that the Denali Commission's job training programs improve employment outcomes for participants.

The GAO found the Denali Commission's activities to be duplicative of other Federal programs.

The Congressional Budget Office examined the Denali Commission and they said that they failed to find any evidence that they have achieved success in these areas in large part due to the overlap of the Commission's activities in other Federal programs.

And in October of 2013, the Office of Inspector General said that the Denali Commission was a middleman, that it was an experiment that had run its course and argued that these funds could be appropriated and be put to better use.

Put the funds towards Alaska. Put them actually in direct grants rather than a program that is a middleman around it. There are ways to be able to determine this, but we as a Nation have to find ways to be able to eliminate duplication, and this is one of those moments.

Are we going to listen to the inspector general, the Congressional Budget Office, the GAO, two different Presidents' Offices of Management and Budget, or will we ignore all of those?

With that, I encourage us to deal with a transition, continue to take care of the needs of rural Alaska but find a more efficient delivery system to do that.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source