Peter Welch: “one of the fundamental responsibilities that this Congress has is to protect taxpayer dollars. That has become an…”

“one of the fundamental responsibilities that this Congress has is to protect taxpayer dollars. That has become an enormous challenge, as many of the taxpayer dollars that are appropriated are paid to private contractors. The growth in contracting in the past 6 or 7 years has exploded. Procurement spending in 2000 was $213 billion. Procurement spending is when we enter into a contract with a private company to deliver goods or services. That amount exploded last year to $412 billion. Much of that is going to Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this is being subject to waste, fraud and abuse. The Oversight Committee under Mr. Waxman and Mr. Davis has done vigorous oversight and identified in 2006 that there were 118 contracts valued at $745 billion that were found by government auditors to include a significant component of fraud, abuse and mismanagement. And, in fact, it got worse. In 2008, that report identified 187 contracts valued at $1.1 trillion, where they were plagued by waste, fraud and abuse. The bottom line is, will we, as a Congress, Republicans and Democrats, be vigilant in protecting taxpayer dollars? We have to do that, especially when there is documented evidence of rip-offs, wicked rip-offs that have occurred with taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.”