GAO has previously recommended that OMB should work with agencies to ensure they are making adequate investments in training on performance planning and measurements.

I am optimistic. There is a lot of good stuff in place.

I think certainly consulting with Congress in that process would be very important and valuable.

But we did use pretty good performance data, and I think it was instructive and helpful to my colleagues as they made the tough decisions for some of them.

From the work that you have done at GAO, could you provide us maybe with an example or two of how an agency was able to bring about better outcomes through the use of performance information?

That is a good story. Thank you.

Unless you are keeping score, you are just practicing.

a plane that we have been building all these years, its mission-capable rate is down around 50 percent, where we spend, I think, about $40,000 per flight hour for the aircraft that has never flown a single mission in Iraq or Afghanistan…

What we are working on just down the hall in the next building is, I think, of historic consequence.

He has inherited an economic crisis that has required unprecedented international cooperation to jump-start the world's economies.

When you are running a budget deficit, in the last 8 years we ran up as much new debt as we did in the first 208 years of our Nation's history, this year on track to our biggest budget deficit ever, and if we look forward to the next 10…

Those are just a few of the exceptional challenges that our country, including our government, needs to be prepared to address.

I think it needs to be a collaborative effort, and certainly we want to involve you and your staff in helping us think through how is it most useful to you.

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

This year, we are on track to run up the biggest single-year deficit ever.

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.

It would not leave much of a future for your kids or for mine or for any of our children.

Was it Richard Nixon who used to say that the only people who do not make mistakes are people who do not do anything?

The work that we are doing here, this is real money.

Good. Well, I like that philosophy.

And I would just hope, as we extend the three-state demonstration for Medicare cost recovery to the other 47 States, that we will begin preparing to extend the same kind of cost-recovery approach to Medicaid.

I am pleased that the President has sent us such a qualified candidate for this position.

Have you all given some thought and attention to another related concern, and that is with respect to agencies making decisions to lease property as opposed to purchasing it?

All right. A different question, a different area. As you know, progress has been made in recent years in improving the quality and, I think, the timeliness of agencies' financial statements.