Political Quotes

“I want to spend a few minutes talking about what is occurring with the GSA conference waste that has been in the news of late. My criticisms are not mainly directed toward GSA. Over 3 years ago, I started doing oversight on conferences by government agencies. Today I have an amendment, which will not be allowed to be considered, that will hold the agencies accountable in terms of their conferences. Through the years I have put out five reports on wasteful conference spending from the Department of Justice, where it spent $380 million over a 5-year period on conferences, to the Department of Agriculture, and to the Department of HHS in terms of sending thousands of people to one conference at a time. All of it went unheeded. Now we have the GSA--with Members of the Senate and the House aghast at the waste that has been spent in terms of the GSA conference out West. Had we been doing our job--and there were multiple amendments I have offered over the last 6 years to control conference spending, which have been rejected on party-line votes, to try to bring some semblance of reasonableness and control to conference spending by the various Federal Government agencies. So we have this problem with the GSA today, but not because of the GSA; it is because of ourselves. We refused to do the hard work of passing requirements that would hold Federal agencies accountable.…”