Tom Coburn: “this is a great case for the American people to see what is not operating right in many of the branches of our…”

“this is a great case for the American people to see what is not operating right in many of the branches of our Government. There is a procurement contract that started out 8 years ago. The total cost was to be $200 million. The idea was to save money on purchasing travel vouchers for our military. That was the goal. The original cost was $246 million. We are now 8 years into this, and we are over $464 million. It is working at a 30-percent level. It was working at less than 10 percent last year. Even though we have the GAO saying they may have saved $13 million this year, the fact is that study didn't consider the fact that the vast majority of time when they buy an airplane ticket they do not get the best price. So that wasn't even considered. The purpose of this amendment is to cause us to focus again on what we are doing. There are no-bid contracts, contracts that change in terms of violation of the contracting laws, performance bonuses, pay for back costs, negotiating through the procurement procedure. There is no significant oversight in this Congress on procurement in the agencies of this Government. That has to change. Nobody in the private world would get away with this. Nobody in their personal life would be able to get away with this.…”