Mike Conaway: “I thank the gentleman for yielding, I appreciate the chairman's words, and I hope those aren't mutually exclusive, being…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding, I appreciate the chairman's words, and I hope those aren't mutually exclusive, being distinguished and being from Texas. I rise in strong, strong support of this year's Intelligence authorization bill and encourage my colleagues, all of them, to support this. But with that strong support comes a modest amount of disappointment in that, through no fault of anyone in particular, we had to make a tough decision to strike section 412 from the bill, which would have allowed certain elements within the intel community to set up their own direct accounts with Treasury. It's a bit of an arcane statement, but it allows greater steps toward achieving auditability across the intelligence community. This provision was intended to promote this goal of better financial accountability and insight into our classified spending. The intelligence community, Mr. Chairman, must meet the same financial accounting standards as the rest of the government. Those accounting standards will help uncover savings in current programs that can be reinvested into vital intelligence priorities or returned to the taxpayers.…”