While there are obvious issues with Congressional oversight, accountability, and transparency with the creation of new czar positions within the Executive Office of the President, that is a totally different issue from Senate-confirmed…

I think we need to more aggressively look at the internal controls in the Federal Government as well as at the State and local levels.

It becomes difficult, and the problems are obvious as you try to measure this.

This mistake may cost taxpayers about $2.5 million and it could easily have been prevented.

the success of the pilot program, in our view, is also very important to striking the right balance, as Senator Collins was talking about, between accountability and getting the money out quickly.

Striking the right balance between speed and caution has been a challenging task.

Preventing fraud in the execution of stimulus funding is a key element to the ultimate success of the Recovery Act.

We remain determined to protect this critical spending from waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

we have to make sure that we do what the President said we are going to do, which is that we are going to watch every dime.

The Senate was determined to make sure that the final version of the bill had a quicker impact on the economy by having a faster spend-out rate than the House bill had.

The Recovery Act also creates several important oversight mechanisms that the Chairman and I worked hard to ensure were included.

Waste or fraud in the spending of the $500 billion of stimulus funds will only further erode the American people's confidence in their government.

We were pleased that OMB and the Vice President adopted our recommendation, and they are going to clarify that.

Right now I believe that they are hopeful, but they are also skeptical, of whether we can spend this much needed money wisely.

It is critical to do so in a responsible and transparent way.

The more eyes that we have on this spending, the better.

I think that Senator McCaskill has raised an important point, and it is a point that I had intended to raise as well.

Now the challenge is to make sure that the billions of dollars provided by that law achieve the purpose of boosting our economy and saving and creating jobs.