Darrell Issa: “The American people have a right to know that taxpayer dollars are well spent. We have a responsibility to stay up with…”

“The American people have a right to know that taxpayer dollars are well spent. We have a responsibility to stay up with the times. As government has grown, waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement have increased. Today, however, the technology is before us, if we simply embrace it, to do a far better job of accounting for every dollar spent on behalf of the American people. That's not just the American dollars that are spent by the Federal Government, but dollars passed on to the private sector, to the States, to public entities, and to nonprofits. Today, as those trillions of dollars are put out, we find that we don't know where they're spent. At best, we know the first place they went to. Under the Recovery Act, often called the ``stimulus,'' we can all disagree or agree on how the money was spent; but unlike previous appropriations, under that act, we found a way to do a better job of tracing the dollars, of tracing the dollars through recipient reporting--a system that, although costing a little bit to do, ultimately once set up saves money. The DATA Act before us today will literally track those trillions of dollars in a way not done outside of the Recovery Act. Quite frankly, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Recovery Board for showing us an effective system on which we could build. Just a few days ago, our committee, on a very bipartisan basis, evaluated the GSA's lavish spending.…”