[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 25264]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE IS RAMPANT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Neugebauer) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NEUGEBAUER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because of the serious 
concerns I have about wasteful spending practices by the United States 
Government. Waste, fraud and abuse is rampant.
  Financial management, for instance, at the Department of State is a 
problem. Although it accounts for billion of dollars annually in 
appropriations and possesses over $20 billion in assets, it usually 
cannot determine how much its programs cost or how much money it has. 
An audit revealed that the State Department owes $3.5 million on past 
orders that have never been delivered, a revelation which the 
Department's accounting books failed to reflect. One contract billed 
the Department for $92,000 in insurance premiums for a policy that 
never existed.
  The financial management service at the Department of Treasury could 
not produce details on many outstanding checks, and in one case, caused 
a $3.1 billion overstatement of its cash position. The Inspector 
General reviewed 24 individual cases of government purchase on credit 
cards at the same department. The investigation revealed that purchases 
were unsupported and unjustified, and while none of those were large, 
had large price tags, they concluded that the system is more than 
moderately subject to fraud, waste and abuse.
  Last November, the GAO investigators created a fictitious graduate-
level school they called Y Hica Institute for the Visual Arts, 
purportedly located in London, and received student loans on behalf of 
fictitious students, including one name which was the same as the chair 
of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate 
Government Affairs Committee.
  Employment Training Administration's accounting system for grants is 
consistently poor. For example, transfers of Workforce Investment Act 
funds are not even noted on the agency's books.
  The Department of Labor Inspector General estimates that the IRS 
overcharged the Unemployment Trust Fund by $174 million in fiscal years 
1999 through 2002.
  $238 million in funds were found that the States no longer needed on 
projects that should have been redirected to other projects. Of this 
amount, $54 million was idle for 16 years on a freeway project in 
Connecticut that had never even started.
  The Environmental Protection Agency awarded $700,000 on a contract 
without knowledge of the work the recipient was going to perform. The 
work plan did not have clear objectives, milestones, deliveries or 
outcomes.
  The Inspector General of the EPA audited a sample of 116 assistant 
agreements awarded by the Office of Air Radiation and the Office of 
Water. In 79 percent of these projects, using over $100,000, project 
officers could not document the costs or document cost reviews of the 
proposed budgets. In 42 percent of these projects, the EPA did not even 
determine the environmental outcomes. For example, EPA awarded a 
recipient $200,000 to regulate costs charged by power companies. The 
work plan contained no environmental outcomes and stated that specific 
projects would be identified at a later date.
  These are just a few examples of the waste, fraud and abuse, a 
problem which is decades old. Republicans, led by the gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. Nussle), the Committee on the Budget chairman, and President 
Bush and those of us here tonight are working hard to eliminate the 
culture of waste that exists today, and I believe we have a chance. I 
urge my colleagues to join this effort because waste, fraud and abuse 
within the Federal Government not only steals from the taxpayers, but 
the beneficiaries so desperately in need of quality services.
  This is not a debate about which programs should be funded. This is 
about bringing accountability to the money that is spent. As Members of 
Congress, we have a responsibility to do make sure that the American 
families do not get ripped off.

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