Claire McCaskill

The more we dig in, the more we realize more work needs to be done.

I want to get at USIS in terms of not only having the biggest contract to do the background checks; but also having this program support contract.

The government, the taxpayers are providing clearances for contractors.

I think we should consider during the pendency of your investigation into the falsification suspending clearance temporarily for any of the people that could be impacted by the falsification just because I think it would be easy for us to…

If I was going to falsify something, I would not be stupid enough to put down the name and the address of the person who is going to say, 'No, they never contacted me.'

Is that true? They are allowed to keep their classification even though you have discovered that during the period of time their security clearance was given that somebody was criminally falsifying?

These are all public dollars.

It is overwhelming to me the amount of recommendations that have been made in this area that have been ignored by your agency.

I think all four of us have demonstrated a desire to get after various problems that are sometimes embedded in our government without adequate oversight.

If they want to do business with the government in a classified setting, it seems like this should be their dime and not ours.

What if they falsify who they contacted and they are the ones getting the recontact letter?

For the people who are in the parameters of the investigation around these criminal convictions for falsification, I assume that their access to classified material is cutoff while that is done?

We need to get that figured out, because if we are actually saying to the American people that there are not the resources available to audit a fund that holds $1 billion worth of public money, we have a real problem.

It is outrageous that it has never been audited.

Only if we were combining up to put a criminal in jail.

All through our government there has been an easy way to augment personnel by doing these program support contracts.

They are getting a premium for something we paid for.

It does not make sense that we pay them for it since we did it in the first place.

I know your background, and I know that you are through and through an investigator.

So what you are saying is all somebody has to do in government is give some of the money that has been appropriated to another agency and, presto, whamo, no audit?

Typically, agencies that have the least amount of oversight by Congress have the worst record of thinking that what GAO says matters.

I am tired of this assumption being made that contractors are cheaper, because I have been at this for 6 years.

So we are paying USIS several hundred million dollars a year to do background checks, and we are paying them $45 million a year to do the office work.

I am not surprised that no one has gotten into the weeds on this subject, so bear with me while I get into the weeds on one of my favorite subjects.

Maybe we should talk about a requirement that any letters from Congress advocating on behalf of certain vendors, that they immediately be posted on a public website and that calls be logged and posted on a public website.