On the recordOctober 11, 2017
No one has ever had a better partner on a piece of legislation than I have had. The best way I can describe Mr. Connolly is, like anyone else who came to a realization of something, he came to it with a great deal of zeal. This partnership, which began before the passage in 2014, to modernize a 1996 initiative that had fallen short, has been his passion and mine. Normally, when you are chairman, people talk about what divides the committee. But nothing united us more than recognizing that over $80 billion was being spent--and much of it needlessly. We don't achieve what we want to because there is never enough. Part of it is how we procure. Prior to the passage of this legislation, it certainly was possible to have major pieces of procurement have somebody in charge who could not, in fact, change or drop the expenditure and who could not simply say: This isn't working. On top of that, often the people who did have the authority lacked the expertise. This has been true in all sorts of areas. There is much more work to be done. Unlike Clinger-Cohen, which went on for 18 years before being updated, we were just 3 years past the implementation of this bill. With Congressman Connolly's effort, we are coming back and making real changes--ones that can continue the process and speed it up. Obviously, there are some areas like the IT dashboard and others that simply need to be continued to be renewed. This bill does it. When I first talked to Mr.…
