Claire McCaskill

There is something touching veterans in almost every agency of government, all for the right reason, because people wanted to help veterans.

Breaking down these barriers is critical and requires innovative and comprehensive responses.

No one is doing the due diligence to make that effort really meaningful in any way.

It was interesting. I try to visit small businesses in my State from time to time.

I just wonder if we were even doing the oversight that is necessary to find the fronting.

Claire McCaskill wants is some kind of policy that says you don't give bonuses to people who are under investigation or reprimanded.

I have been worried about the accuracy of distribution of our money to the payroll of the Afghanistan National Army (ANA).

We supported the 2008 to 2011 Wartime Commission that Senators McCaskill and Webb established.

I get very frustrated with the amount of money that has been spent and the amount of time it has taken.

Maybe I need to talk to Secretary Panetta and say we need a deadline for data standardization.

I do not want to leave them behind.

Stepping back from this, do you think we have made--if you look at what has been a common problem in all of these struggles, it has been data standardization and it has been the specs on interface.

I think that is great.

Senator Manchin had more contractor-related questions that we will submit.

I can go find you a bunch--I can go out to State auditors offices and find you a team of government-trained auditors that you could get a lot less expensively than $500 an hour.

We have a defense integrated military human resource system that we spent 12 years on and more than $1 billion in an effort to modernize the military payroll and personnel systems.

I think all of you know how engaged I am in the contracting issue.

I want to make sure that we are not in the process being shortsighted.

I want to make sure that we are doing better on that.

Do you think you have made some improvements in that area? Do you think you have something that will pass the standard in terms of an effective, repeatable process?

I really understand the point you are making because I think one of the reasons we got into this mess is everybody wanted to hold onto legacy systems.

I can assure you there will be some manual workarounds required, but we will not do a large-scale, army of auditors, fully manual approach.

We have been working with Senator McCaskill, who chairs this subcommittee, and others on improving wartime contracting efforts.

I will be paying very close attention to how much money it costs us to get to this 2014 number.

The Navy will be shutting down more than 100 legacy systems over the next few years.