Neil Abercrombie: “I want to pay a special thank you, a big mahalo, to Mr. Scott and to the Judiciary Committee for their hard work. I am…”

“I want to pay a special thank you, a big mahalo, to Mr. Scott and to the Judiciary Committee for their hard work. I am very grateful to the ranking members, the Republicans and Democrats. We cannot resolve this without seeing to it that we have a bipartisan approach on this. I am particularly grateful to Senator Pat Leahy, who is the Judiciary Chairman in the Senate, for entrusting this bill to our care here in the House and allowing me to introduce it as a companion bill to the one that has passed in the Senate. I am very hopeful that we can get a vote in the Senate and move this to the President's desk. When the wrong computer equipment arrived in Iraq, the contractor ordered it dumped into a mammoth burn pit and placed an order for replacements, rather than sending it back. The government paid for both the wrong computers and the replacements. The contractor collected a fee for each, thanks to a cost-plus contract. Halliburton had drivers driving empty trucks between bases in Iraq, unnecessarily exposing the drivers to danger, because the company was paid by the trip, not by the amount of materiel hauled or a flat fee; $186 million was spent over 2 years to build 142 health care centers, yet only 15 have been completed and only eight are open. According to testimony, the contractor lacked qualified engineers, hired incompetent subcontractors, failed to supervise construction work, and failed to enforce quality control.”