Andrea Joy Campbell: “While we have a few moments, I thought I would describe a couple of sections of this bill. One that might be of interest…”

“While we have a few moments, I thought I would describe a couple of sections of this bill. One that might be of interest to our colleagues deals with the vehicle program description. This bill contains a significant amount of funding for the Treasury's law enforcement activities. Senator Kohl and myself are very strong supporters of Treasury's law enforcement efforts. As our colleagues know, in our fiscal year 1998 bill, we included a request for GAO to do a study on the utilization of vehicles by Treasury's law enforcement bureaus. I have to tell you at the outset, this committee does all it can to ensure that the law enforcement agents within Treasury are well equipped to do their duties. However, when I became chairman of the subcommittee, I noticed that all law enforcement bureaus in Treasury would put forth requests for new vehicles, stating that many of their vehicles 'were well above GSA standards,' which in this case means the speedometers said 100,000 miles or more on them. Upon further discussion with the bureaus, it became apparent that agents have door-to-door use of their vehicles. The rationale here was, if the law enforcement officer is called for duty during their off-duty hours, they need to be able to reach the scene in a vehicle which is up to law enforcement standards.”