Political Quotes

“the Federal Government awards more than $600 billion in grant awards--$600 billion. We actually do more in grant awards than we do in contracting. Our current system is riddled with outdated reporting mechanisms that burden grant recipients and inhibit oversight from Agencies in Congress. The bill, H.R. 4887, which is called the GREAT Act--Grant Reporting Efficiency and Agreements Transparency Act--tries to put some sense into this process. This is a process that has worked with all of the grant requesting Agencies. Whether they be universities, whether they be entities for research, they have all gone through this for the past couple of years, actually. They have given a tremendous amount of input because they struggle in actually requesting the grants and in getting through all of the chaos of those grants. The OMB and other entities are not getting the data information to the American people, so there is no transparency in that process. For the past couple of years, we have worked very hard to establish a good process of getting transparency and also of helping the grant- requesting entities get a more efficient process. The GREAT Act would require, within 1 year, OMB and the leading grant Agency to establish a governmentwide data standard for information related to Federal awards. Within 2 years, guidance must be issued for grant-making Agencies on how to apply those standards and implement them into the existing reporting practices.…”