Susan Collins: “I am very sympathetic to the frustration expressed by the Senator from Oklahoma. Our committee, last year, had extensive…”

“I am very sympathetic to the frustration expressed by the Senator from Oklahoma. Our committee, last year, had extensive hearings looking at waste, fraud, and abuse in the spending of funds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We documented over a billion dollars of waste or fraudulent spending. So the Senator has put his finger on a very important problem. I am very concerned about the practical impact of the Senator's amendment. The Senator, at one point, had a second-degree amendment, which he has decided not to offer, which addressed part of my concern. The Senator has said this morning that the Department would have 18 months to comply with the provisions of the Improper Payments Act. But, in fact, the plain language of his amendment says the Secretary shall not award any grants or distribute any grant funds under any grant program under this act until the certification, risk assessment, and estimates that his amendment calls for have been completed. The result of that, because our legislation includes some grant money for interoperability under the Commerce Committee provisions in the bill, for this year, is that it halts those funding programs, those grant programs. The result is to penalize first responders, State and local governments, for the faults that are largely from the Department of Homeland Security. I don't think that is fair.”