Jeff Denham: “I am here this afternoon to talk about H.R. 1734, the Civilian Property Realignment Act. Here we have an opportunity to…”

“I am here this afternoon to talk about H.R. 1734, the Civilian Property Realignment Act. Here we have an opportunity to not only cut waste, but also to create jobs and to bring in new revenue without raising taxes. Here's an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to agree and send the President actually something he is asking for. What the Civilian Property Realignment Act would do would be to have greater oversight over leasing authority. We would also have redevelopment of underutilized property, the best use possible, and combine agencies. Where you may have 50 percent of an agency in one building, 50 percent in another, we're going to combine them into one agency. And then we're going to sell off the things we just don't need, properties that we have around the entire Nation, some of which have sat vacant, some of them are declared excess, underutilized, sell off the things we just don't need. And then, finally, we want to create transparency. We want to shrink the size of government by creating transparency, showing how many employees are going to be housed in which buildings, and before we go out and lease new space or buy new space actually let people know before we go out and hire new employees. This is the best opportunity, I believe, to shrink the size of government. I want to go through these one by one. First of all, oversight of leasing authority. We held a hearing several months ago.…”