Mike Thompson: “First of all, let's keep in mind my amendment makes the use of child labor grounds for disbarment and suspension. We…”

“First of all, let's keep in mind my amendment makes the use of child labor grounds for disbarment and suspension. We need to keep that in mind. We set it out in bold type. It is already against the law, and now we are saying in addition to that you can't do business with the Federal Government if you engage in that kind of activity. So we get that out of the way to start with. That is not the issue. The issue here is whether or not we want to set up a mechanism whereby some Federal official has unlimited access to your books and records and persons. Now, this whole area was entirely rewritten in 1994. Senator Glenn's bill, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, provided for very circumspect, specific audit authorities for agencies, and GAO provided some subpoena authority in a very limited way. All this was debated and considered on a bipartisan basis and the competing interests were balanced out over a period of several days, and we came up with a law that we have now. What we have here in the bill that we are seeking to amend departs from that substantially.”