Tom Coburn

Our tendency to put a parochial benefit into the things we do in Congress has driven us to lead to all the duplication.

The important thing that has not happened in my years in the Senate is significant oversight of how we spend money.

Every dollar we spend we find that is wasted can be reallocated to things that are actually doing some good.

Congress has failed to do its job, and oftentimes OMB has failed to do its job, and I have a lot of confidence that you can actually make a very big difference for our country.

I ask for the yeas and nays. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.

This is a simple vote. The Postal Service lost $15.8 billion last year. Political parties contributed to that loss by our getting a discount on all of our mail. All this will do is put us at the same rate as everybody else commercially in…

I understand what the Senator from Louisiana is trying to do, but it goes toward the bigger problems of GSA. I will give you a great example. In my hometown they are building a brand new U.S. Attorney's Office with four other sites that…

There is one agency in the Federal Government that knows all its programs. Only one. The Department of Education. They actually publish it every year. They actually have done a great job. I compliment them. Not one other Federal agency…

Would the Senator, through the Chair, take a question? Does the Senator know the number of agencies in the Federal Government that actually know how many programs they have in their agency?

It has turned into an all-hazards agency, which was never its intent

The country needs this laboratory to protect its agriculture industry.

We cannot ever get answers

It takes a while for it to get all the way down.

Sitting and thinking about our hearing today, the one word I had not heard, which should have been in everybody's testimony, is 'risk-based.'

You need a backbone, the person that is running the agency, and take the heat, but do what is right for the country.

I think the important point Dr. O'Toole made is we will work with you if you buy in.

This is the way to do oversight.

We have got to figure out a way to have a better assessment.

We need to figure out together, how we do this more effectively to really help States when they are overwhelmed.

The Stafford Act says that the Federal Government should get involved in disasters when State and local capacity is overwhelmed.

I want to pin you down. Is this per capita damage indicator a good measure to determine State and local capacity to handle disasters?

So they should take note that we are going to keep our eye on it.

The reason I am so interested in this is I saw the wasted money in Hurricane Katrina on debris cleanup, and it was atrocious.

Did I hear you say that you only get CDBG funds based on disasters?

If you are in the Hurricane Sandy disaster area and you are not going to find out until July of this year what the floodplain map is, what are you supposed to do for your home?