Dan Coats: “as many of my colleagues know, I have been coming to the floor for 22 weeks now--every time the Senate has been in…”

“as many of my colleagues know, I have been coming to the floor for 22 weeks now--every time the Senate has been in session during this cycle--to address another waste of the week, and that is what I am doing here this afternoon. The amount of money we would be able to save that has been designated as waste, fraud, and abuse has an estimated total of nearly $116 billion, and though people continue to say we can't cut a dime because every dime of taxpayer money is used for an essential function, that is simply not true. While we have not been able to come forward with what I believe is absolutely necessary to stop this continued deficit spending and plunge into debt--the larger issues that we will be dealing with later in this session--we can at least hopefully stand together and support those documented spending waste, fraud, and abuse issues that have been presented to us by the various nonpartisan agencies that audit and look at how we control our spending. Today I will add some more money to that amount by discussing an agency called the National Technical Information Service, NTIS. This is an agency within the Department of Commerce. It was created during the Truman administration to keep all the reports produced by the Federal Government in a central location and make them available to the American public through sale.…”