Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Russell for yielding time. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking Representative Jimmy Gomez for his comments tonight and for helping all through this piece of legislation, the Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act, or GREAT Act. Representative Gomez has been an outstanding partner on this bipartisan bill to create more transparency, efficiency, and accountability in the Federal grant reporting process, and I thank him very much for his hard work. The GREAT Act represents bipartisan legislation to modernize the Federal grant reporting process. It would do so by mandating a standardized data structure for information that recipients report to Federal agencies. Unless the reporting requirements for Federal grants are searchable, the auditing process will continue to yield waste and inefficiency at best, allowing fraud and abuse at worst. Mr. Speaker, in 2017, the Federal Government awarded $662.7 billion in grants funding to State agencies, local and Tribal governments, agencies, nonprofits, universities, and other organizations. Roughly translated, this equates to the gross domestic product of Switzerland or more than the GDP of every country outside the G20. Within our Federal Government, there are 26 agencies awarding Federal grants, and all of them continue to rely on outdated, burdensome, document-based forms to collect and track grant dollars.…”