In the American Recovery Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, there is some very good language and good provisions to put us in a position to protect the taxpayers in the spending of this money.

It is critical. I am very pleased that Maine has the opposite situation of Connecticut.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one final question for me.

We intend to very closely and aggressively monitor spending of stimulus money ourselves.

the intent--indeed, the letter of the stimulus act--requires Federal, State, and local governments, but also private businesses, that are receiving money under the Recovery Act to adhere to the transparency and accountability requirements.

It is extraordinarily important that we track the job creation provisions of this bill so that we know whether or not we were successful in creating or saving 3.5 million jobs.

The board is meant to ensure coordinated and comprehensive oversight of stimulus spending and provide regular reports to Congress and the public.

Our vision in authorizing such a core of experienced contracting officials applies exactly to this kind of situation.

As much as 7 percent of the Recovery Act funds may be lost to fraud and abuse.

if you take $787 billion, even if it is a 1 percent loss, you are talking about a huge amount of money

I would add, it did not reconcile the funding in that Act with the funding that we had just approved.

I am fearful that a lot of people will fall for that scam because--and what I think was an error in policy--we did do these one-time checks a year or so ago of $300 or $600 to taxpayers.

Do you support legislation that would allow for the rehiring of annuitants without their incurring a financial penalty?

It is going to be a challenge. I will not try to softball that one.

I believe it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that does not happen.

The Administration has estimated that more than 3 million jobs will either be saved or created by this Act.

If recovery is to be successful in cities and towns, the first most important thing we need to do is help educate our local leaders.

My concern about having two different methods of measuring job creation or the number of jobs saved is that it could serve to undermine the public's confidence in the credibility of the numbers.