Claire McCaskill

So the vendors would probably be on our side?

I think all of the companies that are allowing themselves to be manipulated in order to plus-up these contractors should be ashamed of themselves, particularly in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think my predecessor, Senator Truman, would have an awfully hard time getting his arms around how big this problem has become.

So what they do is they force a price increase on the local market so that they can take a piece of it?

Right, because by the time it gets to where the rubber meets the road, it is two or three degrees removed.

That could be this no value added addition of some company that is there just to be an excuse for a place to park the rebate?

But we could fix that legislatively. We could say, if the flow of dollars are Federal dollars, then any agents that are hired to run programs that are funded through Federal dollars must be subject to Federal laws of suspension and…

So it is called a fixed-price contract, but really, it is anything but.

So on accounting, they can keep track of it if it is going to be their money. They just cannot keep track of it if it is going to be our money.

So they are actually encouraging their folks to utilize those contracts that are most rebate-heavy internally and they are keeping track of it for purposes of judging how well their employees are doing at maximizing their profit?

We obviously have--my State, for example, we used to have 27,000 feeder pig operations in Missouri.

I think that would mean that there is an assumption that the government can always negotiate for volume discounts unless they are prohibited from doing so by law, like they are in Medicare D.

In this time of belt-tightening, we need to be more careful than ever to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted--particularly because every dollar that is lost through rebate schemes is a dollar that we cannot use to feed our…

Well, that may be true, but it seems to me that would have a lot more credibility if we took the rebate issue off the table.

It seems to me that part of the problem is that contingency contracting continues to be side-lined in DOD

I'm very worried that we are throwing money at something that is just not sustainable, and that is the ultimate insult, I think, to the men and women who have risked their lives.

We can't win if we continue to waste money.

I strongly believe we have a new imperative for strategic stewardship of our national treasure by the Department of Defense (DOD) and its leadership.

You're the real deal. You have been an incredible leader for our military.

I have asked questions about this fund before in hearings in the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight of HSGAC and I continue to have serious concerns about the fact that DOD is building these projects that the Afghan Government cannot…

Without the trust and confidence of the American people we can win every tactical fight on the ground and still not be strategically successful.

DOD must continue to aggressively look for ways to save money without compromising its ability to fight and win the Nation's wars.

I do not believe sustainability analysis is going on in earnest in most of these decisions that are being made.

I do not think there is ever too many auditors.

If you are going to rely on volunteers, you are going to always have a problem.