[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 66 (Wednesday, May 12, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H2882-H2883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       WASHINGTON WASTE WATCHERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HENSARLING. Mr. Speaker, I rise again as part of the Washington 
Waste Watchers, a Republican working group dedicated to rooting out the

[[Page H2883]]

rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government.
  Despite a major economic recovery underway, rising employment, new 
jobs and historic rates of home ownership, Democrats keep demanding 
that we take away the tax relief, take away the tax relief that is 
responsible for this unparalleled growth in our economy, the tax relief 
that is bringing down the unemployment.
  The tax relief, if it were a line item in the budget, amounts to 1 
percent, 1 percent of the $28.3 trillion 10-year spending plan approved 
last year. In other words, 99 percent of our fiscal challenges are on 
the spending side. And, Mr. Speaker, that is where we need to focus our 
attention, and by any measure, spending is out of control in 
Washington.
  For only the fourth time in the history of our Nation, the Federal 
Government is now spending $20,000 per household. Mr. Speaker, it is up 
from just $16,000 just 5 years ago, representing the largest expansion 
of the Federal Government in 50 years.
  We have a spending problem, not a taxing problem, and now is not the 
time to raise taxes again on American families and small businesses, as 
Democrats seek to do. Instead, it is time to take the trash out in 
Washington. Let me give my colleagues just a few examples of typical 
waste, fraud, and abuse in government that we found just this week.
  The Interior Department's Inspector General discovered that the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs accepted inflated school enrollment estimates 
that resulted in the construction of schools that were larger than 
required. The Bureau spent $37 million for unneeded school space and 
has future plans to spend an additional $74 million for even more 
excess school space. This wasteful use of our tax dollars occurred 
because the Bureau had not developed or implemented simple policies to 
count students. And yet Democrats want to raise our taxes to pay for 
even more of this? One hundred and eleven million dollars of the 
American people's hard-earned money down the drain. That is enough 
money to outfit 3,700 Humvees in Iraq with armor plating.
  Additionally, the Department of Transportation's Inspector General 
stated that if the Department simply imposed better oversight on 
projects from start to finish and aggressively fought gas-tax evasion, 
the Department could save billions of dollars. In fact, if the 
efficiency with which the Federal Government and the States invested 
$700 billion in highway projects was improved by only 1 percent, an 
additional $7 billion would be available, and that could fund 8 out of 
the 15 active major highway projects today.
  This is especially relevant because the House voted recently to 
approve a $284 billion highway bill that will force Congress to either 
increase the deficit or raise gas taxes to pay for it.
  Next, Mr. Speaker, just this week the GAO announced that the 
government paid $169,000 in fees to unaccredited schools for bogus 
graduate degrees for Federal employees. I mean, that is a blatant 
violation of Federal law. The General Accounting Office said this 
amount was actually an understatement and that it is impossible to 
verify the true cost of this fraud because the Federal agencies do not 
have systems to verify academic degrees and because they do not 
accurately account for these expenses. In fact, the Department of 
Health and Human Services, when asked by the General Accounting Office 
to verify expenses on degrees, said they could not produce them because 
they maintain such large volumes of information in five different 
accounting systems.
  One hundred sixty-nine thousand dollars on bogus degrees. That is 
enough money to protect over 100 of our American soldiers in Iraq with 
Kevlar vests.
  Mr. Speaker, the list goes on and on and on; so does the waste, the 
fraud, the abuse and the duplication, and this has been going on for 
decades.
  The problem is, we now have over 10,000 Federal programs spread 
across 5- to 600 agencies with little accountability to anyone, and 
when you just scratch the surface a little bit, what you discover is 
that so many of these programs routinely waste 5, 10, even 20, 25 
percent of their taxpayer-funded budgets, and have for decades.
  Republicans are working hard to root out this senseless waste of 
American tax dollars, but too many of our Democrat colleagues keep 
fighting us every step of the way. Last year, our Committee on the 
Budget approved a budget asking for authorizing committees to identify 
1 percent of waste, fraud and abuse, just 1 percent. Yet the Democrat 
leaders ridiculed and reviled our efforts. One Democrat leader termed 
it ``a senseless and irresponsible exercise.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am sure that most Americans disagree. With the Nation 
at war and with a large budget deficit, there is no better time to root 
out this waste, fraud and abuse than now, because when it comes to 
Federal programs it is not how much money Washington spends that 
counts, it is how Washington spends the money.

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