Norman D. Dicks: “The gentlemen's amendment strikes section 8101 from the bill. This section provides that the Defense Department must…”

“The gentlemen's amendment strikes section 8101 from the bill. This section provides that the Defense Department must certify compliance with a fiscal year 2008 law which requires DOD to provide an inventory of its service contracts, review those contracts, and then integrate those results into the budget process before using the OMB Circular A-76 privatization process. I rise in opposition to the gentleman's amendment. This provision is included in the fiscal year 2012 budget request. It requires that DOD exercise responsible stewardship over its contractors by providing an inventory of such contractors, a review of associated contracts, and an explanation of how these contracts are integrated into the budget. The provision requires the Department of Defense to maintain better accountability of the thousands of contractors performing services for the Department every day, and therefore maintain better accountability of funds. Striking this section releases the Department from this responsibility. And I must tell the gentleman from Texas, who is a good friend, that we had a terrific problem getting the Department of Defense to even be able to tell us how many contractors they have. We had this problem in Iraq, we had this problem in Afghanistan, and we are still struggling. Now they give us a quarterly report of how many contractors and how many contract employees there are. I have always believed in the A-76 review process.…”