James Lankford

The Center for Excellence was supposed to be self-funded with revenue.

In some agencies, it may be working exceptionally, but just the last several months, IBM, after years of doing telework decided this is not working and they are pulling people back in.

When we have literally thousands of people that are teleworking, and we do not know if it is working or not.

I have had some conversations with some Federal managers that have said they have very strong high walls that they cannot supervise on telework days and it has made it very difficult to be able to get good metrics.

Do not pull back from giving us accurate information for the sake of saying we have to play the Washington game on things.

Everyone knows that is not real, but yet the law allows it.

More data in its rawest form is helpful to us rather than its refined lowest-common-denominator-type form.

I would also say in what opinions come out, do not feel an obligation to I guess water it down to the lowest common denominator Congress can handle.

CBO would look at that and say Congress has fixed that every year, they come up with a new way to fix that every year.

Typically, the answer from Congress is we do not know.

Yes. So, help provide some clarity.

I think that will be very helpful to us.

I think there would be a good return on investment in the following areas. I am very concerned about the growth in improper payments in the Federal Government.

Hopefully, we can get that done. Senator Heitkamp and I are working on getting that hiring authority.

Let me just bounce several questions off of you, and we will do a couple of rounds of questions and try to keep them in smaller bites so we can run through some things.

I look forward to the testimony as well.

Do you feel like the amount that you're requesting is an adequate amount for that?

What is the ongoing conversation in the budgeting to say let's plan for a medical emergency or an outbreak of some type?

So for disaster relief, we have for several years in this Congress tried to figure out an appropriate amount.

Okay. We'll look forward to getting a chance to work with you on that.

We'll look forward to just maintaining that conversation.

We very much appreciate the work on that.

I want to make sure we are getting your input in here as well.

It seems like around a $4 billion idea to be able to save a lot of money back and forth with that.

Why I cannot, when I electronically file my taxes, also electronically file my Census?