Political Quotes

“I thank my good friend and our distinguished ranking member of the committee, Mr. Cummings, for his graciousness and generosity. He has been a great leader and a great mentor in our committee. I also thank the distinguished chairman, Mr. Issa, for his leadership on this legislation. I have been proud to cosponsor and coauthor this bill with him. In the 21st century, Mr. Speaker, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens. Yet our current Federal laws governing IT management and procurement are antiquated and out of step with technological change and growth and yield poor results. Far too often, cumbersome bureaucracy stifles innovation and prevents government from efficiently buying and deploying cutting-edge technology. Program failure and cost overruns plague the vast majority of major Federal IT investments. As the distinguished chairman indicated, if only the rollout of the health care Web site were a unique incident. Unfortunately, it actually characterizes most major Federal IT procurement rollouts. Some Federal managers report as much as 47 percent of their budgets are spent on maintaining inadequate or antiquated IT platforms. That is 47 percent. In recent decades, taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for massive IT program failures that ring up staggeringly high costs but exhibit astonishingly poor performance.…”