Claire McCaskill

We have really created some precedents in these contingencies that are unprecedented in our military history.

I will tell you, I will not rest as long as I am here until we get this work done.

I guess the answer to your question is that I do not think you get to make that call.

If we cannot build it without paying the bad guys to keep our contractors from getting shot, then why are we building it?

This makes me goddamned mad.

Well, at a minimum, should we be thinking about legislation that says to the U.S. Government, if someone has done business with us and owes us money and they are a foreign contractor, then that should equal suspension and debarment?

I believe that is why power plants like Kabul happen.

Senator McCaskill's ad hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight will take the lead for our Committee both in oversight and in bringing forward a legislative package based on the Commission's report.

We achieved a consensus that the Commission would be independent, bipartisan, energetic.

Should we put something in the law that says you cannot go forward with a project until there is some kind of written documentation about a sustainability analysis?

We were successful in having this legislation enacted that put the Commission into place.

It is so easy for us just to gloss over as we try to make the Federal Government smaller.

If we do not continue to pound the leadership of the military about contracting, we are going to expect more of the same.

And I think you have hit the nail on the head, that this has not been a priority for the military.

If Congress devises this oversight and they are there and they legally have the ability to look at you, then you do not get to say no just because you have too many.

I need to know who made this decision and what were they thinking.

I want to thank both you and the Ranking Member for all the work you have done to improve contracting practices.

I honestly believe that at the War College, contracting has to be one of the core competencies.

Especially when we are trying to keep our contractors from getting killed, because we are paying off the bad guys to provide some level of security for the projects that are ongoing.

I am so proud of the folks that are here from Missouri, and I thank you so much, Madam Chair, for giving me the opportunity to come in and sit with you today on your Committee and the important work you are doing.

This is a time of great discontent in our country about our government, and I think we are naive if we do not acknowledge and talk about it.

I think that is the kind of bipartisanship we all long for in this body and certainly that we hope to get on the Federal judiciary.

Nothing was more frustrating than having a judge presiding over a trial that it was fairly clear they had never been in a trial.

She will let people try their cases. She will not impose her judgment in terms of any bias she has on any matter of policy into the courtroom.

I am honored today to be here to introduce Beth Phillips as a nominee for the Western District Court of Missouri.