Tom Carper

I have spoken, I believe, with you before and with Mr. Zients about some work that is going on within the Department of Health and Human Services to try to go out and recover monies that have been improperly spent.

Given the kind of budgetary challenges that we face, it is imperative that we do that.

Good. Well, I like that philosophy.

In 8 years we ran up as much new debt as we did in the first 208 years of our Nation's history.

Tom Carper of Delaware... pressed the president behind closed doors to bend on that and specifically, to hold off on that so-called public option for several years.

I think that is one of the fundamental reasons why you are seeing a significant reduction in the use of award-fee contracts in the Department of Defense.

We have had the hearings in this room before in talking about, among other things, cost overruns in IT projects.

That is a great coincidence.

My guess is that somebody at DOD a couple of years ago... said, if we are going to run this agency the right way, we have got to do something about these award fees.

Part of our job is to provide oversight.

Do they have a Chief Procurement Officer at HHS?

Thanks very much, and when we get to the Q&A, I am going to be asking you--you talked about the declining awarding of award-fee contracts over the last couple of years, and one of the questions I will be asking you is: Is there anything…

I talked to one of my colleagues the other day, and we talked about how over the last 8 years we have increased our Nation's debt by, I think, more than we actually increased it in the first 208 years of our Nation's history.

I have a lot of confidence in OMB that they will get it right.

Then I think beyond that, one Department of Homeland Security official gave a contractor an award fee despite saying the contractor's actions were egregious and 'wasted taxpayer money.'

The Department of Health and Human Services did not send a witness today to our second panel, and I am disappointed with that.

We are on track this year to run the biggest single-year budget deficit we have ever run.

I would have liked to have been there for that.

I think we are fortunate to have a couple of members of this panel who have actually been auditors for their State, Attorney Generals for their State, and the expertise that you bring to the Senate is very much appreciated and valued.

I think one of our other witnesses in the second panel talked about the lack of training.

Why do you think the Department of Defense has actually made rather remarkable improvement, not perfect but a remarkable turnaround?

I think OMB's guidance, again, hits many of the key things, but what our work has shown, even this most recent report, is that the word has not gotten down to everyone throughout all the different agencies.

Thank you for saying that. I welcome that comment.

I have also heard over time that a fourth criteria would be to have folks at the agency who are capable of effectively monitoring the work of contractors and evaluating that work.

I think we do need to be careful that we are not creating more work on already a stressed workforce.