Cross posted at Turn Maine Blue
In Monday's (28 Jan) Morning Sentinel, Jen Burita, Communications Director for Collins' Senate campaign, had this LTE in which she wrote:
The assertion that Collins has been anything but a leader on oversight issues related to Iraq and federal contracting is absolutely false. Collins' leadership in exposing waste, fraud and abuse in federal contracting and in asking tough questions is well known.
Collins has held dozens of hearings on waste, fraud, and abuse in federal operations and is the author of major bipartisan contracting reform legislation that already has been approved by the Senate.
This got me to thinking: what were some of these "dozens of hearings" that were held. And our government still being somewhat transparent (despite the efforts of Dick Cheney), I found myself at the website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which has this handy page listing all of them.
There's more:
What Ms. Burita didn't relate in her letter was the sheer number of hearings held by the HS&GA Committee, but as I'm focused on those involving investigations of waste, I scanned through the titles to find the ones that fit the bill. I admit that I clicked on some that sounded intriguing, like this one that looked into whether Minnesota was as prepared as it could be to combat an outbreak of SARS (8 Oct 2003):
Description: The October 8th field hearing will be the third hearing the Subcommittee has conducted on the issue of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). At this field hearing, the Subcommittee will focus on what Minnesota has done to prepare for a possible outbreak of SARS this year and what still needs to be done; how the Federal government can help; and how schools, businesses and communities should respond when someone they know develops a possible case of SARS.
Yes, that's right – the committee traveled to St. Louis Park, Minnesota, to get a hands-on view of things.
Then I saw this title, DOD’s Improper Use of First and Business Class Airline Travel (6 Nov 2003); I knew I had hit paydirt. Collins writes:
Over the past three years, Congressional hearings and reports by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Inspectors General have consistently shown that government-issued travel and purchase cards have been subject to continuing waste, fraud and abuse. A recently completed GAO investigation of premium airline travel by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) employees during fiscal years 2001 and 2002 determined that most first and business class travel was not properly authorized and/or justified. As a result, DOD wasted millions of taxpayer dollars for premium airline tickets.
Now waste is waste, and scoff if you like, but it all adds up. So members of the Bush administration were jetting around getting their travel on – there was an invasion to sell. But who knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg? 9 June 2004 bring us this: Going Nowhere: DOD Wastes Millions of Dollars on Unused Airline Tickets, about which Collins has this to say:
Today the Governmental Affairs Committee will focus upon waste and mismanagement in the Defense Department’s travel card program. An important part of this Committee’s mandate is to protect the federal treasury against waste, fraud and abuse. At a time of war, when every dollar is needed to support our troops and to fight terrorism, this mandate becomes particularly critical. It is very troubling that the Defense Department has wasted millions of dollars in unused airline tickets due to sloppy and inadequate internal controls. Every dollar wasted by the Pentagon is a dollar that could be spent on the war against terror.
I, too, am troubled about this waste (couldn't they have sold these unused tickets on eBay or Stub Hub?). And to think that Special Inspector General (SIG) Stuart Bowen wrote this (pdf warning):
After stepping off the plane in Baghdad in February 2004, I quickly recognized the scope of the enormously complex and signifi cant mission that confronted us and the lethal, chaotic environment in which we would have to do our work. I told my staff that our overarching goal would be to provide oversight that promoted economy, efficiency, and effectiveness and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
By the time the CPA-IG was fully operational in Baghdad, only a few months remained before CPA’s tenure expired. The end of the CPA in June 2004 signaled the potential end of the CPA-IG, but the publication of our July 2004 Report caused the Congress to conclude that there was a need for continuing oversight in Iraq. Billions of dollars and the future of Iraq reconstruction were at stake.
It seems that Ms. Collins must have seen an advanced copy of Bowen's report.
Of course, she did look into the UN Oil-for-Food Program; Maine Owl has an excellent piece here, and I'll only add that the corruption wasn't limited to the Iraqi's.
Collins pursuit of wasted dollars that could be better used for the war effort led her to investigate empty Federal office buildings (6 Feb 2006), once again traveling to the Midewest to better ascertain the situation:
Did you know that more than 30 federal agencies are wasting --at the very least--, $15 billion in unused real property assets worldwide? We don’t even know how big the number is because there is no definitive inventory of federally owned facilities and land, let alone an inventory of buildings and land that go unused. Taxpayers are losing billions each year as Congress keeps sending checks to pay holding costs for vacant buildings, instead of demanding that they be sold or demolished.
Location: the former Main Post Office in Chicago, 2.5 million square feet of unused property. Holding costs for this facility exceed $2 million annually, and it has been vacant since 1997. Why has it taken so long to sell the property?? This field hearing will explore the reasons why so many agencies do not efficiently or effectively maintain and manage their real property portfolios.
I admit that even I was a little shocked to learn that the Fed had so much unused property (I think this is the building used in the 1987 film The Untouchables – but don't quote me on that).
July of 2006 found the HS&GA Committee investigating whether Federal credit cards were being used improperly. One can only imagine that with the many thousands of such cards, abuse does happen. Ms. Collins knows this firsthand:
Government purchase cards are similar to the personal credit cards that many of us carry, but with a notable difference – the American taxpayer pays the bill. The government is responsible for paying all charges by purchase cardholders, regardless of what was purchased or whether the buyer got a fair price. When used properly, purchase cards allow agencies to streamline the acquisition process and reduce costs when buying goods and services or paying government contractors. When used improperly, purchase cards enable wasteful and even fraudulent transactions.
The American people expect the federal government to spend their tax dollars wisely – especially in this time of great fiscal pressures and a large budget deficit. That is why this Committee has undertaken many investigations to expose and eliminate wasteful spending. Indeed, this is not our first investigation into the misuse of purchase cards. In 2004, this Committee held a hearing on the purchase card program used by the Department of Defense. We heard from Mr. Kutz, one of our witnesses today, about a lack of oversight and internal controls at DoD. It is disturbing that he will tell us today about a similar lack of oversight and internal controls at DHS.
During her four years as chair of the HS&GA Committee, Collins held more than a few hearings into government waste, some more important than others - often about not very glamorous subject, such as the Postal Service. Of the hundreds of official meetings held by the committee, I have listed but a few - I urge you to read through the list and click through to ones that meet your fancy.
But penny wise, pound foolish is the adage that comes to mind when I review her actions. As reports of incredible amounts of waste in Iraq increased in the media, one wonders why Collins held just one hearing on the reconstruction efforts there (and that to just to get a briefing on SIG Bowen's 2006 report) and none on the assistance our government was giving to the fledgling Iraqi state (either direct aid or through private contractors).
There is only one reason that I can think of why Collins refused to, in her own words, "expose and eliminate wasteful spending" in Iraq: she chose not to.
The question is then: Why?