Claire McCaskill

It sounds like, to me, that it--that if--either you're going to take the position it's de minimis...

Well, that sounds like real money to me.

The experiences they've had with AT&T and others, frankly, are outrageous, how difficult it has been for them to curb this practice.

It seems like, to me, that would clean it up pretty quickly and you all could do that on your own without the government getting involved.

I think that, you know, two of those three are very easy to do fraudulently.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here today and welcome to you.

I'd like to know how many total third-party vendors AT&T has a contract with.

I encourage you to use that muscle, that we have money and you need it to get the data that we need to provide the integrity to the program.

I think that it makes more sense that we are giving them that help as opposed to jacking up costs for everybody by all the uninsured care that would occur the more we cut back on the Medicaid program.

I think it is great that you were able to do that and I wish the rest of government would take note

Did no one have any idea that was going to be the case before it began?

Thank you both very much.

Well, who is it that is in the room that is deciding which pot of money you are taking this out of?

I cannot figure out who to call.

I traveled to Iraq to do nothing but look at contracting oversight because I could not figure out how in the world things have gotten so out of control in terms of contracting in Iraq.

Well, I assume when the security costs went way up, the casualties began to go down.

It makes it very difficult to hold anybody accountable because what happens, I feel like I am boxing ghosts.

We have never before--honestly, sir, this is really historic in some ways, because what we have done here for the first time that I am aware of, we have decided that in a military operation, we are going to do things like build justice…

The President has asked for $17 billion in fiscal year for reconstruction projects and infrastructure projects in Afghanistan.

Maybe we need to figure out that blight, work the blight. Maybe it will be less expensive than $2 billion.

Which is for all the highways, all the roads?

There was no training. There was not sufficient effort made on sustainability.

I think this is the kind of stuff that we would have liked to see covered in your opening statement, Mr. Sedney.

Well, we have done CERP now for as long as I have been in the Senate, and so we have lots of CERP money that has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So you would typically have 24 first tier subs and 147 second tier subs on projects that you would work?