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99–783 PDF 2005

THE FINANCIAL REPORT OF THE U.S.

GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2004

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,

FINANCE, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FEBRUARY 9, 2005

Serial No. 109–3

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, FINANCE, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania, Chairman

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

HENRY A. WAXMAN, CALIFORNIA

MIKE HETTINGER, Staff Director

TABETHA MUELLER, Professional Staff Member

NATHANIEL BERRY, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on February 9, 2005 ......................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Hammond, Donald V., Fiscal Assistant Secretary, Department of the

Treasury ......................................................................................................... 71

Martin, Jack, Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Education ........ 62

Walker, David M., Comptroller General, U.S. Government Accountability

Office .............................................................................................................. 8

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Hammond, Donald V., Fiscal Assistant Secretary, Department of the

Treasury, prepared statement of ................................................................. 74

Martin, Jack, Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Department of Education,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 66

Platts, Hon. Todd Russell, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of ...................................................... 3

Porter, Hon. Jon C., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Nevada, prepared statement of .................................................................... 101

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 5

Walker, David M., Comptroller General, U.S. Government Accountability

Office:

Information concerning credit program costs ......................................... 87

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 12

(1)

THE FINANCIAL REPORT OF THE U.S.

GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2004

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, FINANCE, AND ACCOUNTABILITY, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:04 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Todd Russell Platts

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Platts, Towns, Dent, Marchant, Westmoreland, Duncan, and Foxx.

Staff present: Mike Hettinger, staff director; Dan Daly, counsel;

Tabetha Mueller, professional staff member; Jessica Friedman, legislative assistant; Nathaniel Berry, clerk; Adam Bordes, minority

professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PLATTS. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Committee on Government Reform will come to order.

As we begin the 109th session, it is great to be serving again

with my ranking member, Mr. Towns from New York, as well as

our other colleagues on the majority and minority side. I look forward to an active and productive 2-year session as we go forward

from this hearing of the committee today.

As stewards of taxpayer dollars, we owe our citizens no less than

full accountability. At the very least, we need to ensure that assets

are protected from loss or misuse. Ideally, we need to ensure that

every dollar is spent wisely and for its intended purpose. We

should also understand fully the cost of the Government’s operations and the implications of our financial commitments.

To fulfill these important responsibilities, Congress began requiring that the Federal Government would produce audited financial

statements beginning in fiscal year 1997. The 2004 financial report

of the United States and accompanying audit performed by the

Government Accountability Office were released on December 15th

of last year. This deadline represents an important milestone. It is

a huge improvement over the days not too long ago when agencies

took nearly 6 months to close their books. Timely financial information is necessary for responsible budget decisions, and in times of

fiscal constraint, as many Federal agencies are required to do more

with less, real time financial data becomes a critically important

tool.

For the 8th straight year, unfortunately, GAO was unable to provide assurance as to the reliability of the information that

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underlies the Federal Government’s financial statements. As has

been the case year after year, GAO reported significant material

deficiencies. Additionally, this year a new issue came to light that

warrants consideration. Eleven agencies restated their financial information for the previous fiscal year. Frequent restatements can

undermine the credibility of our financial reports.

During this hearing we will discuss the possible reasons for these

restatements and ways that we can improve the process going forward to ensure that information is reliable as well as timely.

Perhaps the most important benefit of the audit process is learning how to correct systemic weaknesses. We have seen improvement since the inception of the Government-wide audit in 1997, but

until we can be assured that the reporting information is reliable

and GAO can issue a clean opinion, we will not benefit from the

full value of this report.

The Government Reform Committee has a responsibility to ensure sound financial management through appropriate oversight,

and this hearing will establish the basis for our work in the 109th

Congress.

Our witnesses today will provide the subcommittee with insight

on the audit findings of the consolidated financial statements and

discuss areas that need improvement.

Today we are pleased to have the Honorable David Walker,

Comptroller General of the United States; the Honorable Jack Martin, who will represent the Office of Federal Financial Management

at the Office of Management and Budget, and who is CFO at the

Department of Education; and Donald Hammond, Fiscal Assistant

Secretary at the Department of Treasury. We will certainly look

forward to the testimony of each of our witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Todd Russell Platts follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. I now yield to our ranking member, the gentleman

from New York, for the purpose of making an opening statement.

Mr. Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by saying I really thank you for your leadership.

I look forward to working with you to make Government more responsible. It is good to be back here with you.

I look forward to continuing our good work on improving the performance and efficiency of the agencies and programs that so many

Americans depend on every day. While I am pleased to see that the

agency community is continuing to make progress in meeting their

imposed deadlines for annual auditing requirements, these results

seem to indicate that efforts to achieve a clean Government-wide

audit are stagnant.

As in previous years, a vast majority of agencies are meeting

their goals of achieving an unqualified audit opinion, leaving us to

focus our attention on a select few. Nevertheless, there is noteworthy decline in the number of agencies receiving clean audits

when compared to last year’s results. For fiscal year 2004, only 18

out of 23 agencies received a clean audit opinion, down from the

20 agencies receiving clean audits for fiscal year 2003.

Furthermore, we are witnessing a sharp increase in the number

of agencies restating their results from the previous year. According to GAO, there are 11 agencies that offered restatements for fiscal year 2003 compared to only 4 agencies during the previous

cycle.

While the underlying reason for these restatements remains unclear, it certainly merits our scrutiny. Publicly traded entities that

restated its prior results would face harsh scrutiny from the FCC

and its investors, so why shouldn’t our agencies be scrutinized the

same way by Congress and the taxpayers?

Perhaps it is too early to tell if our efforts to improve agency financial management over the past decade have been adequate or

if the system and practices for managing our Federal agencies are

faltering. That said, the 2004 statements remain troubling to me

and merit a thorough review from the Government Accountability

Office.

There is no question that the road to sound financial management and program efficiency within our Government runs through

the achievement of a clean Government-wide audit; thus, it is imperative for us to continue with adequate oversight of agency efforts if we are ever to bring our Government’s chronic budget deficit and debt burden under control.

I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and gaining their

perspectives for making our Government a more effective and accountable institution.

On that note, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Thank you for your kind words. Again, I look forward to working with you. We have taken a great team approach

in the past 2 years. It worked so well. I was delighted that we got

to stay in the same chairs that we are in as chairman and ranking

member.

Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Chairman, I must admit I agree with everything

you said but that.

Mr. PLATTS. We will proceed to our witnesses. We appreciate all

three of you and your staff for your preparation for today’s hearing

and your appearance here today. As is a practice, if I could ask our

witnesses to stand and any staff who will be assisting them, as

well, to take the oath with them.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you. The clerk will note that all witnesses affirmed the oath.

We appreciate the written testimonies and we will proceed. We

are going to use a rough framework of about 8 minutes each. We

won’t be real close to that, but if we are able to we will have more

time for questions and more of that give-and-take.

Mr. Walker, we are going to start with you. In advance—I think

you said 6 years and 3 months in your position—I thank you for

your service and your true and clear dedication to the fiscal integrity of the operations of the Federal Government. That name

change is appropriate. The Federal Government is accountable to

the people of our great Nation.

If you would like to proceed?

STATEMENT OF DAVID M. WALKER, COMPTROLLER GENERAL,

U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Towns. I appreciate my statement being entered into the record in its entirety,

and therefore I will try to summarize the highlights and the

lowlights for this subcommittee.

I am pleased to be here again to be able to talk about the results

of the U.S. Government’s consolidated financial statement audit for

the fiscal year ended 2004. I would like to thank this subcommittee

for continuing its tradition of holding annual hearings. I think it

is very, very important that you do that, and I would note that because of your interest and efforts I think it has helped to make

faster progress. I do think we have made progress over the last

several years in a number of different ways. I think that has to be

acknowledged.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, one of the aspects of the good

news is that for the first time in its history the Federal Government issued its annual report, which included audited financial

statements, on December 15, 2004, clearly a much expedited schedule from what has been the case in the past. I think that is clearly

a positive action that we should all be pleased with and proud of.

At the same point in time, for the same basic reasons as we have

for the last 7 years, the Government Accountability Office has not

been able to express an opinion on the consolidated financial statements for three primary reasons.

No. 1, the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense is

the tail on the dog. We will not be able to express an opinion on

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the consolidated financial statements, in my view, until the Department of Defense gets its act together.

There are two other reasons: one, because of certain intra-governmental transactions; and, second, because of certain activities

dealing with actually preparing the consolidated financial statements. My personal view is we will solve those issues well in advance of solving the challenges associated with the Department of

Defense, which I am happy to get into during the question and answer period.

While it is good news that we achieved this record reporting

date, one area of concern that you mentioned is the fact that there

was a significant increase in the number of restatements of prior

year agency financial statements. These statements primarily relate to the reconciliation of the budget results with the financial

statement results, which is a fairly new statement and one that

people, I think, are still trying to get comfortable with. But the fact

of the matter is that when you have restatements of financial

statements, that is a very serious matter and would be taken very

seriously in the private sector.

The fact of the matter is that it is important that we not trade

improved timeliness for decreased reliability. I believe over time we

won’t do that, and I think it serves to reinforce the importance of

making sure that agencies have the right types of systems and effective controls in order to be able to get this done in a timely and

reliable manner. That is critically important, not just to be able to

generate audited financial statements at the end of the year, but

in order to be able to have timely, accurate, and useful information

to be able to make informed management decisions on a day-by-day

basis.

I would also note, as you are aware, that the principals of the

Joint Financial Management Improvement Program, the three primary ones dealing with financial management matters being the

Secretary of the Treasury, the Director of OMB, and myself as

Comptroller General of the United States, agreed several years ago

that success in financial management was not merely a clean opinion on the financial statements, but you also had to be able to

achieve no material control weaknesses, no major compliance problems, and have systems that provided timely, accurate, useful information to make informed decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Based on that criteria, only 4 of 24 major departments and agencies meet that test, up from 3 last year. As the chart shows, 18 of

the major 24 Federal agencies received clean opinions this year, the

same as last year. But keep in mind this: when somebody has restated their financial statements, that means they didn’t deserve a

clean opinion in the prior year and they shouldn’t be stating, ‘‘We

got a clean opinion last year and we got a clean opinion this year,’’

because by definition if their financial statements were restated,

other than for a change in accounting principle, it means they

should not have received a clean opinion in the prior year.

In fact, one of the things that we are looking at is to determine

what, if any, modifications should be made to generally accepted

governmental auditing standards to make sure the auditors point

out what the effect of that restatement would have been had they

known about it in the prior year. I think it is also something that

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OMB needs to consider in determining the criteria for when you

get to green in the financial management area, because if you have

restatements something is wrong. We need to make sure that people are held accountable when they have that type of situation happen.

If I can, in the balance of my time I just want to reinforce with

this subcommittee something that I have been talking to many

committees of the Congress about on both ends of the Hill, and

that is if you look at the consolidated financial statements of the

U.S. Government you will find that since the beginning of the republic in 1789 we have run up a net negative position of about $7.7

trillion. Worked out a little differently, right now total debt is

about $7.6 trillion, another way of looking at it.

But if you look at these financial statements and also the management discussion analysis section, the footnotes, etc., you will

find there are a lot of other very big numbers in there, many of

which are not on the balance sheet of the U.S. Government. For example, you will find that we have made significant promises

through Social Security, through Medicare, and other programs

that, in current dollar terms, represent huge mismatches between

what we have promised and what dedicated revenues are there to

be able to deliver on those promises.

In fact, if you were to take current liabilities and add on top of

that the present value dollar difference between what we have

been promised and what dedicated revenues are there in the form

of payroll taxes or premiums or whatever else to deliver on those

promises, then our current burden is about $43 trillion and rising

every day. That is about $350,000 for every full-time worker. It is

$145,000 per American. The total estimated net worth of all individuals in the United States combined, including Bill Gates, is $47

trillion, and yet we are already committed to $43 trillion.

That reinforces the point that we need to continue to provide enhanced transparency through our annual financial reporting as to

where we are and where we are headed.

By the way, these bonds that are in the so-called ‘‘trust funds,’’

you won’t find them as a liability on the balance sheet of the U.S.

Government. The reason being, under current accounting and reporting treatment the right hand owes the left hand; yet, nonetheless, we took the people’s money, we spent the people’s money in

operating expenses, we replaced it with an IOU, and I think we

need to reconsider the accounting treatment for that and other

areas, as well.

Last, we are on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path. Due to

known demographic trends and rising health care costs, we face a

sea of mounting red ink. We are not going to be able to grow our

way out of this problem. It is going to be critically important that

we engage in a fundamental baseline review of discretionary spending, mandatory spending, entitlement programs, and tax policy. It

may take up to a generation to be able to deal with this gap, but

the sooner we get started the better.

For the benefit of this committee, on February 16th, before a full

committee hearing of Senate Homeland Security and Governmental

Affairs, GAO will release an unprecedented 21st Century Challenges report which will summarize where we are and where we

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are headed. This report will raise a number of key questions that

need to be asked—and hopefully answered—about the base of existing Government programs, policies, functions, and activities, and

offer some possible alternatives for a way forward, because our

country, our children, and our grandchildren are counting on us to

deal with this problem. And in order to deal with it we need timely,

accurate, useful financial reporting and we also need performance

reporting that is results based so we can understand what is working and what is not working and where we are generating a return

on investment and where we need to reconsider our current position and plan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Walker.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. You hit on the things that we want to focus on:

timely, transparent, reliable, useful information that will benefit

all aspects of the Federal Government as we try to achieve those

goals that we are all after.

Next we have Mr. Jack Martin, CFO of the Department of Education. As you are hitting your third anniversary at the Department coming up here later this month, we appreciate your service

and also again thank you for your service in the past as a U.S. Marine and your service in uniform.

STATEMENT OF JACK MARTIN, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER,

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Mr. MARTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

As the Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Education I

am very pleased to be here today to provide some perspective on

the Federal financial reporting process for fiscal year 2004. I look

forward to sharing with you some observations on the Government

Accountability Office’s report on the financial report of the U.S.

Government, as well as the significant progress made by Federal

agencies during the past fiscal year.

During this past fiscal year the Federal Government achieved a

significant milestone in the area of Federal financial reporting. For

fiscal year 2004, 22 of 24 major agencies issued audited financial

statements in their performance and accountability reports just 45

days after the end of the fiscal year. Prior to this year, agencies

generally took up to 5 months to produce these same reports.

Complying with an administration requirement that took effect

this past year, agencies have now significantly reduced the reporting delay that had been typical in the past. As a member of the

CFO Council, where I have had the opportunity to work with other

agency CFOs and their deputies, I can tell you the entire CFO community is pleased and proud to have played a role in this major

accomplishment.

The Department of Education was 1 of the 22 agencies that met

the 45-day reporting deadline in fiscal year 2004. In fact, Education

met this accelerated deadline for the second year in a row, since

we issued our 2003 in mid-November the previous year, a year

ahead of the requirement. Our success was certainly not attained

overnight; rather, the work done over the previous fiscal years,

with careful planning and efficient execution, enabled us to reach

this milestone.

The financial reporting efforts at the agency level enabled the

Department of Treasury to issue the governmentwide financial report on December 15th for the first time. In previous years, the

Government-wide financial report was typically not issued until

March.

With the accelerated reporting deadline taking effect this past

year, agencies faced a 1-year fiscal period in which there was less

time to prepare audited financial statements compared to previous

years. Despite this shorter reporting timeframe, a comparable

number of CFO Act agencies received unqualified audit opinions on

their financial statements in fiscal year 2004 as in the prior year.

Of the 24 major Federal agencies, 18 received unqualified audit

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opinions in fiscal year 2004. This result in the face of a more rigorous audit schedule is especially noteworthy since greater financial

discipline and reliance on internal controls was needed to successfully meet the 45-day reporting timeframe. Accelerated schedule

demanded good planning and timely reconciliations, and we are

pleased with these efforts.

For fiscal year 2004 I am pleased to report that the Department

of Education was 1 of 18 agencies that received an unqualified

audit opinion. Education has received an unqualified opinion for

the last 3 fiscal years, and we look forward to continuing our fiscal

vigilance in the coming years.

Some have questioned the accelerated reporting requirement, asserting that the earlier date may result in poor-quality data. From

our perspective at Education, this is certainly not the case. Education has met the accelerated deadline for the past 2 years, receiving unqualified audit opinions each time. An unqualified opinion

we have received has required a more rigorous financial reporting

and audit schedule compared to the previous fiscal years.

Further, the early reporting date has allowed our department

and others the benefit of having financial information throughout

the year on which daily management decisions can be made on a

routine basis. The accelerated reporting requirement has driven

process and control improvements that have laid a foundation for

management reports such as Education’s Fast Facts report.

Fast Facts is a monthly reporting tool that highlights key financial and performance data in a consolidated and user-friendly format. Managers at the Department use Fast Facts to monitor performance and derive improved results in a variety of areas including grants administration, financial matrix, and educational outcomes.

In the Government-wide financial report, GAO identified three

main impediments to rendering an opinion: financial management

problems at the Department of Defense, ineffective processes for

preparing the consolidated financial statements, and deficiencies in

accounting for intra-governmental transactions.

These three items were reported by GAO as material weaknesses

in its report. All these issues are complex, long-term challenges and

will take sustained efforts to resolve. DOD is addressing specific

weaknesses and progress is being made. It is important to recognize that longstanding issues in a department that has over 300

sub-entities are not easily fixed. In some cases, eliminating DOD

material weaknesses depends on the implementation of new financial management systems. In other cases, material weaknesses require an incremental approach to transforming business processes,

which involves focusing on one component at a time or one financial statement line item at a time.

For fiscal year 2004 the auditors determined that three significant financial statement items at the DOD-wide level—appropriations received, investments, and Federal Employment Compensation Act liabilities—passed audit scrutiny. In addition, six components, up from five the previous year, earned an unqualified opinion on the fiscal year 2004 financial statement.

During this fiscal year 2004 reporting cycle, significant progress

was made in implementing a new process for preparing the finanVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 May 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\99783.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cial report. The new process facilitates a stronger, more direct link

to agency financial statements, something that has been a concern

of GAO. While the new process was successful in producing Government-wide financial statements within the new accelerated reporting timeframe, there are issues that need to be refined and improved during fiscal year 2005. The CFO Council looks forward to

working with OMB, Treasury, and the other agencies to improve

this process.

It is my understanding that the inability to balance significant

amounts of intra-governmental transactions is being addressed on

several fronts by OMB and Treasury. Process enhancements such

as more-frequent reporting and reconciliations and new tools like

the intra-governmental reporting and analysis system will support

the efforts to eliminate reporting errors. These new analytical tools

have helped to better focus corrective actions.

In December 2004, OMB issued the revised Circular A–123,

Management’s Responsibility for Internal Control. Circular A–123

defines management’s responsibility for maintaining effective internal control and requires management to adhere to broadly accepted

internal control standards and undertake a strengthened process

when assessing internal control effectiveness. The strengthened assessment process is similar to the process that public corporations

must follow under the financial reforms of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

of 2002.

The policies contained in Circular A–123 further emphasize a

foundation of disciplined accounting processes and good internal

control for providing timely and reliable information and demonstrating financial accountability.

Eleven agencies restated their fiscal year 2003 financial statements when issuing their fiscal year 2004 reports. These restatements relate to a period prior to the implementation of the November 15th accelerated reporting requirement. Overall, the restatements reflect the greater scrutiny and attention the financial reporting process has received in recent years. Process and control

improvements resulting from accelerating reporting and material

weakness monitoring under the PMA scorecard, as well as recent

revisions to OMB Circular A–123 emphasizing internal control over

financial reporting, will likely serve to reduce restatements in the

future.

One of my goals as CFO is to produce more timely and reliable

financial information and to use this information in a daily decisionmaking to reduce costs and better manage programs. These efforts are currently tracked by OMB as part of the improved financial performance initiative of the President’s management agenda.

I am pleased to report that the Department of Education has

been in green status in the improved financial performance initiative for just over a year. Education was the fourth Federal agency

and the first Cabinet agency to reach this milestone, and several

other agencies have joined us since then. Today a total of eight

Federal agencies have received a green score on the PMA improved

financial performance scorecard. With the recent additions of the

Departments of Commerce and State, eight agencies have an overall green status indicating that they have demonstrated they are

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using financial management information to manage their programs.

I am further pleased to report that the Department of Education

received three prestigious financial management awards during the

last year: The President’s Quality Award for Improved Financial

Performance; a Certificate of Excellence in Accountability Reporting from the Association of Government Accountants; the Alexander Hamilton Award for Technology, the Silver Award from the

magazine ‘‘Treasury and Risk Management,’’ an award that normally goes to private sector corporations.

Conclusion: the outlook for the Federal Government to improve

the quality and timeliness of financial reporting to the American

citizen is positive. While many challenges remain, others that appeared similarly insurmountable just a few years ago are being

solved.

The Department of Education looks forward to working with

OMB and the other agencies to improve Federal financial management in the months and years ahead.

Thank you for listening. I am happy to answer your questions.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Martin.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Martin follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. Your example of the Fast Facts is a perfect example

of that—the internal controls and process, that you have responded

to the accelerated deadline in getting that timeline information

that your managers have to really act on. A great example for

other agencies to follow.

Next we have our Fiscal Assistant Secretary at the Department

of the Treasury, Don Hammond.

We appreciate your being with us. I think you and the Comptroller General started in your positions about the same time, so a

good tag team as we here try to get our arms around the financial

challenges of the Federal Government.

Mr. HAMMOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Actually, Mr. Hammond, before you start, I did want

to recognize we have been joined by three other members of the

subcommittee: Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania, who is on the subcommittee, and two other full committee members, Mr. Marchant

from Texas, and Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia. We appreciate

your participating here today. Go ahead, Don.

STATEMENT OF DONALD V. HAMMOND, FISCAL ASSISTANT

SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY

Mr. HAMMOND. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking

Member Towns, members of the committee. It is my privilege and

pleasure to represent the Treasury Department today to discuss

the state of reporting on the finances of the Federal Government.

Your continued interest in this important subject is much appreciated.

I would ask that my full statement be included in the record.

Mr. PLATTS. Without objection.

Mr. HAMMOND. Thank you.

The financial report of the U.S. Government incorporating the

consolidated Government-wide financial statements is designed to

report on the financial condition of the Government using the accrual basis of accounting employed and understood worldwide for

financial reporting. The report for fiscal year 2004 was the eighth

time that Treasury has prepared and issued this report. We have

learned a lot over these past 8 years, and considerable progress has

been made toward producing a timely, accurate, and useful financial report.

Perhaps even more importantly, the efforts to provide effective financial reporting have led to significant improvements Government-wide in the underlying financial management practices and

processes.

We are pleased this year to have completed the fiscal year 2004

report on December 15, meeting the objective the administration

set out 3 years ago. Every agency met Treasury’s November 18th

deadline for data input into our new report preparation system.

These were significant accomplishments, considering that we also

concurrently launched a new consolidation process. I am extremely

proud of the considerable effort that was expended across Government to make these results happen.

The financial report has been an important addition to Federal

financial reporting. The timely availability of this additional information can more fully inform the budget process. The standardized

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reporting framework promotes comparability and consistency in reporting across years, among agencies, and increasingly among

countries.

The report goes beyond simple reporting of results as it displays

the effects of all significant assets, liabilities, stewardship responsibilities, and other commitments and responsibilities, including social insurance. While the appropriate accounting treatment in the

future for these social insurance programs is a topic of discussion

at the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, the existing

standard does provide for comprehensive disclosure.

We think this year’s financial report shows significant improvement from the first one we prepared for fiscal year 1997. Many enhancements have been made over these past 8 years. Additional information has been added, the presentation improved over the

years, increasing the usefulness of the report for the reader. Less

visible but no less important, the discipline and rigor associated

with the production of regular financial statements have resulted

in improvements in basic financial operating activities. All of these

improvements have helped us hone in on those areas that need further attention on and will be the focus of our activities this year.

GAO’s audit enhances the reports credibility and highlights

areas for improvement. Through this rigorous and continuous process, we will improve our financial management environment and

achieve more credibility in our financial reporting. Once we have

achieved a level of credibility, we will have created the solid foundation for a better public understanding of the Government’s finances.

In order to pass audit scrutiny, we must address three major

areas: serious management control issues at the Department of Defense, the Government’s inability to properly eliminate transactions

between agencies, and deficiencies in the report preparation process.

Defense continues to make progress, but much work remains.

They are such a significant portion of the total financial picture

that it is extremely unlikely that improvement in the audit opinion

will occur without significant further improvement in DOD reporting.

Two new initiatives were included in the 2004 report process

that were designed to reduce the out-of-balance conditions that

exist between agency transactions with other agencies. While it is

too early to assess these initiatives, preliminary results are, indeed,

very encouraging. Our new report preparation system is a work in

progress. We met our first phase objective for agencies to be able

to fully utilize the data collection portion of the system to submit

their financial statement data. We plan to complete the consolidating portion of the system in 2005, which will aid us in demonstrating consistency with the agency’s financial statements and greatly

streamline the preparation process. That being said, a comprehensive draft of the financial report was produced this year in less

than 2 weeks.

Accounting standards require some disclosures that are not currently included in the Government-wide financial report. For the

fiscal year 2004 reporting cycle, we asked agencies for data that reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 May 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\99783.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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late to these particular disclosures, and we are in the process of

analyzing that data to determine its materiality to the statements.

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board has also

launched a project to determine which of the currently required

disclosures would not be necessary in a Government-wide financial

report.

We continue to make progress on the problems of imbalances in

intra-governmental transactions and are devoting increased attention to help agencies fully reconcile these differences. Treasury’s Financial Management Service has added a new tool to help agencies

properly identify and record these intra-governmental transactions.

Treasury and OMB now require agencies to report and reconcile

intra-government activity quarterly instead of just at the end of the

year, which has led to significant reductions in differences in agency reporting.

Supporting the accelerated reporting efforts have been our internal efforts to accelerate our reporting of monthly agency data to financial managers. The monthly Treasury statement, the public

source of budgetary results, has been accelerated in issuance from

the 17th work day to the 8th work day each month, facilitating

agency efforts to verify and use the data in their reports.

As I have mentioned in the past, we continue with our plans to

improve the routine outlay and receipt process by replacing the

current two-step classification process with a single classification.

We have a pilot scheduled for this coming fall. If that goes as expected, we will be implementing this new feature in the coming

years to the dramatic benefit of every single agency.

In summary, we continue to make substantial progress in reaching our objective of effective financial reporting and sound financial

management. Through the efforts to date, numerous issues have

been identified, corrective actions instituted, and processes

changed. Serious challenges remain before we reach our objective,

but we understand our tasks and our commitment to resolving

them is firm. Improved financial reporting leads to the ultimate

benefit of effective financial management. As the stewards of taxpayer funds, our responsibility is to meet those highest standards

of financial management.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my prepared remarks.

I will be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Hammond.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hammond follows:]

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Mr. PLATTS. We are going to go to the Q and A, and we will

begin with about 5 minutes for each Member and have as many

rounds. Good news or perhaps bad news—meaning we will have

more time for a Q and A—is our next series of votes apparently

won’t be until about 5 p.m. now, so we don’t have that crunch coming up at 3 p.m. we thought we may have.

There are a number of issues I want to get into. I think I will

start where all of you have touched on up front, the issue of the

timeframe. While we are pleased to have the information in a more

time-sensitive manner, the November 15th and then December

15th for the consolidated statements, the issue of the pros and cons

of that. The one that seems to be an example is the HUD situation

where HUD’s auditor put their pencils down November 15th. The

Department expressed that they believe they would have gotten a

clean opinion if the auditor could have finished the audit and not

stopped then. One result of that is HUD will have to re-audit their

2004 statement when we come back next year and there is another

expense here.

Should there be more flexibility? While we are pushing for this

time, should we have some more flexibility built into that date of

November 15th? I will throw that out to all three of you.

Mr. HAMMOND. I would be happy to start.

Mr. PLATTS. Sure.

Mr. HAMMOND. I think once you establish deadlines such as

these, the objective should be to hold firm to them. Our experience

has found that, while there is a difficult transition to getting to the

accelerated reporting, once you achieve them the benefits of consistently making those dates or even further acceleration voluntarily before that really benefits the agency.

I will give you one practical example of a benefit. Getting the

management letter report from the auditor in a timely fashion

early in the fiscal year allows the agency to be able to address

those issues within the current year, as opposed to if they were reporting in March, not getting that feedback until midway through

the fiscal year or beyond and then, in essence, being a whole year

behind cycle in being able to fix those identified areas.

Mr. PLATTS. So focusing more on things that the Department of

Education has done internally to make sure you meet that deadline, as opposed to knowing you may have some window of flexibility if you support those internal changes to meet the deadline?

Mr. HAMMOND. Absolutely.

Mr. PLATTS. Yes. Mr. Walker or Mr. Martin?

Mr. MARTIN. I think that we need to stay with the November 15

reporting date. I think the over-arching goal should be for us to get

timely financial information so that our managers can use this information to make decisions throughout the year and at year end.

Receiving a clean audit 5 or 6 months after the end of the fiscal

year, it is great to say you have a clean audit opinion, but it really

doesn’t do anything to manage the Federal dollars that we collect

from our taxpayers. So I think we need to stay with that date. I

think that the agencies that have difficulties making the date once

they improve their internal control structure and perhaps start

their audit in February or March as opposed to June or July, I

think they will be able to make it.

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Mr. PLATTS. OK. Mr. Walker.

Mr. WALKER. Two points. One, I see nothing wrong with the November 15 date. The fact of the matter is that people have to end

up having the right processes, systems, and controls in place no

matter what the date is, especially if it is an accelerated date. They

also need to start the audits earlier rather than what they have

been doing in past years.

The second aspect is whether or not, you have the date of November 15, whether there might be a circumstance in which you

might allow a particular agency on a business case-by-case basis,

a little bit of extra time if it would make any difference on the

opinion they might otherwise receive.

So my view is that you ought to stick with November 15, but

that shouldn’t preclude the ability of OMB, if it so desires, to provide a little bit more flexibility on a case-by-case basis where a little bit more time might make a difference, and they have the ability to do that now. That is a policy decision.

Mr. PLATTS. The issue that may be related to this next year

when we see the audits—that was a big issue this time. We

dropped from 20 clean opinions to 18, but if we add in the restatements and we knock out 7—we actually drop down to, I think, 10

maybe clean opinions, maybe about 13 or so; 18 minus 11 is 7; we

have 7. Let me get my math right here. So we drop down to seven.

So in appearance we actually went up dramatically if we say they

were not clean last year and this year we have 18. We really won’t

know that, because how many restatements will we see next year.

But that broad issue of restatements, I mean, clearly the fact

that 11 departments had restatements tells us there is something

wrong with what we saw from last year.

If we want to start with what you think the major cause of that

number of restatements and how do we avoid that next time

around?

Mr. WALKER. I would speculate two things, and I would ask my

co-panelists to add their remarks.

First, it is my understanding that a disproportionate amount of

the restatements have to do with the reconciliation of the budget

to the financial statements, and that is a relatively new statement.

Some people are still having some difficulty in trying to deal with

it, so one would hope that this situation would improve with time.

Second, not all agencies have the type of systems, processes, and

controls in place to be able to deal with accelerated reporting dates

as effectively as they should be able to.

I would say those are probably the two biggest contributing factors, but I would also like to hear the opinion of my co-panelists.

Mr. MARTIN. Well, I believe that internal control material weaknesses contribute, the failure to reconcile accounts in a timely manner. Heroic efforts, as we have talked about, I think, at previous

hearings, where the opinions are developed based on brute force,

I think those lead to restatements. So to the extent that we can implement the financial management systems implemented, clean up

our material weaknesses, which OMB has programs to monitor,

then I think you will see the number of restatements declining.

I don’t think it is a trend, and I think that they will continue

for a variety of reasons, but I don’t think it is a trend and I think

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that as we can get our arms around internal control issues we will

see a steady decline.

Mr. HAMMOND. Just to add to that, I would agree with both my

colleagues. I think it really does highlight an issue that is going to

be one of continuing focus, which is the need to seamlessly manage

both budgetary data as well as proprietary—what we characterize

as proprietary or financial accounting information, because to the

extent that those restatements do stem from the budgetary area,

it means that the controls leaping back and forth between those

two sources of data need to be very solid.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you. We are going to move to the ranking

member, but I want to recognize we have been joined by Mr. Duncan from Tennessee. Thanks for being with us.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me again welcome all the new members to the committee. I

am looking forward to serving with you.

Mr. Martin, let me begin with you. From your perspective, what

reforms are actually necessary to improve the longstanding financial management problems across the executive branch? What is

the status of the reforms currently in place?

Mr. MARTIN. I think there are a number of initiatives taking

place right now within OMB that are focusing on providing greater

consistency between the various Federal agencies with respect to

the systems that they use, and I think that long-term these OMB

initiatives, not tomorrow, but long-term I think we will see significant improvement across Government based on systems improvements, internal control improvements.

I think back to where the Federal Government was 15 or 20

years ago, I think most of us would never think we would be at

a point now where most agencies are receiving clean opinions.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you.

Mr. Hammond, can you update us on the developments and efforts underway of recovering improper payments referred to you for

collection? Are there any hindrances or anything that we should do

here to sort of assist you in being able to recoup that money?

Mr. HAMMOND. Our efforts to collect the delinquent debt owed

the Government, whatever its source, whether it is from improper

payments or from credit-related programs, are really moving along

very nicely, in part attributable to the wonderful leadership that

has come from this subcommittee over the years. Last year we collected over $3 billion on behalf of the Federal

Government through delinquent debt collection activity. That is a

significant source of repayment, primarily coming from the offset of

tax refunds. This year the President’s budget has two legislative

proposals contained in it that would help us to further enhance and

refine our debt collection activities, and I would look to you all for

your acknowledgement and support of those two important additions to our debt collection program.

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Towns, if I may add a point on that?

Mr. TOWNS. Sure.

Mr. WALKER. There is one area that I don’t believe Congress has

addressed yet that I would put back on the table. Under the

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Prompt Payment Act, it is my understanding that if the Federal

Government doesn’t pay certain amounts within a certain timeframe they incur certain additional costs and penalties. At the

same point in time, if the Federal Government happens to pay

twice for a particular item, the individual who received duplicate

payment not only does not have to notify the Federal Government,

but, in fact, they never have to pay interest or penalty if down the

road it is found out that a double payment occurred. I think we

need to think about leveling that playing field in this area.

Mr. TOWNS. Excellent point. I mean, especially when I think

about the fact that you mentioned the $7.6 trillion and then the

$43 trillion. I mean, I think that we need to do everything we can.

Let me just go to you, Mr. Walker. In your view, what is GAO’s

continuing role in taking to accelerate progress in financial management reform and in developing short- and long-term strategies

for addressing problems that continue to prevent the U.S. Government from preparing auditable consolidated financial statements?

Mr. WALKER. There is no doubt in my mind that the key players

are committed to making continued progress in this area. There is

also no doubt in my mind that the key players are looking for substantive wins, not pyrrhic victories.

The biggest concern that I have, quite frankly, Mr. Towns, is, of

the three big areas that are preventing us from being able to express an opinion on the consolidated financial statements, the one

I have by far the most concern about is the Department of Defense,

and I am happy to come back to that if you want. That is the one

that I still have very significant concerns about.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Walker.

Mr. Martin, back to you. This year the Government celebrated

their timeframe for the submission of financial statements from

agencies to November 15th. Is this perhaps an over-aggressive

schedule for agencies to meet? Could this be a fact in the decline

of the number of agencies that received clean audits for the year?

Mr. MARTIN. I think that the November 15 date is an appropriate

date, an appropriate target for all agencies to meet. I think one element that we haven’t talked about that I haven’t read much about

in terms of meeting that accelerated date is the importance of having all individuals in the agency or department onboard, working

toward a common goal of meeting that date. That means not only

the people in the CFO office, but the Inspector General, the auditors, the program people, everybody in the entire department. I

think at the Department of Education that is pretty much how we

get it. So it is not a solo run for myself and my staff. Everybody

has to say, ‘‘We are going to work together. If we have to work 14

to 16 hours a day for a period to make that deadline, that is what

we are going to do. If we have to work weekends to make the deadlines, that is what we are going to do.’’

I received a commitment from our IG. We talked and we said,

‘‘We are going to do this. We are not going to cut any corners. We

are going to cross T’s and dot the I’s. We are going to do it right

and we are going to have our people work to make that goal.

Mr. TOWNS. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have used up my time.

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Mr. PLATTS. OK. We will come back around. Thank you, Mr.

Towns.

Mr. Duncan.

Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, a few months ago I heard a talk by Charley Cook,

a very respected political analyst, and he made a very interesting

statement. He said that people could relate to and get upset about

$600 hammers and $900 toilet seats and things like that, but he

said he had never seen a figure over $1 billion that anybody could

really comprehend. That made some sense to me.

And then I read in this one article that I was given here. It says, ‘‘Agencies reported $35.7 billion worth of improper payments in fiscal year 2003, according to the testimony of Mr. McCoy Williams

of the GAO.’’ And then I read a few days ago that the Defense Department couldn’t account for about $9 billion over in Iraq. I guess

there are two or three questions there.

First of all, how do we get people to understand how much a billion dollars is? I mean, everybody in this room should be shocked

or horrified by that $35 billion worth of improper payments or the

$9 billion that couldn’t be accounted for in Iraq. We should be horrified by that, but we aren’t.

And then I guess second, how does that happen? How are we not able to account for $9 billion? I mean, maybe you could understand

a much, much smaller figure, but we are talking about huge, huge

sums here, just staggering amount.

Mr. WALKER. First, Mr. Duncan, the bad news is the $35 trillion

is $45 trillion for this year, and that is not all the numbers yet because not all the agencies have reported yet, but that is an accurate number for 2003.

Mr. DUNCAN. You said trillion twice there.

Mr. WALKER. I am sorry. I am sorry, Mr. Duncan. I am dealing

in trillions now. I apologize.

Mr. DUNCAN. I thought my gosh.

Mr. WALKER. Let me clarify.

Mr. DUNCAN. A trillion, a billion.

Mr. WALKER. The number for fiscal year 2003 for improper pay- ments was about $35 billion or $36 billion. The number for fiscal

year 2004 was about $45 billion, and that is not everything because

not all agencies have reported.

Second, you are correct that even when you deal with billions,

much less than trillions, it is hard for people to relate to it. One

of the challenges you have is to try to convert that number into

something that people can relate to.

You mentioned, for example, the Department of Defense. A billion dollars for the Department of Defense would fund roughly

10,000 Army troops. So for every billion we waste, we don’t have

the ability to fund 10,000 Army troops. So you have to take these

numbers and convert it in terms that I think people can relate to.

The $43 trillion number which I mentioned is about $350,000 per

full-time worker when the average family income in the United

States is $42,000. It compares to $47 trillion, which is the total accumulated net worth of all Americans, including their home equity.

So we need to put these numbers in terms that people can understand them.

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But we have large and growing structural deficits and we have

to get serious now. We can’t afford to waste anything, although

waste will never be zero in the world’s largest enterprise, which is

the U.S. Government.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, it will never be zero, but we sure have to do

a lot better than what we are doing or we are going to run into

some terrible, terrible problems. I mean, we are already—you

know, the Congress voted to raise the national debt to $8.5 trillion

a few months ago. Now they tell us that the deficit for this year

is going to be $427 billion, and it is going to be more than it was

last year. It just keeps going. At any rate, do you know about this $9 billion that they were

talking about a few days ago, how that happened?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Duncan, GAO right now is doing work to get

a handle on where the money went for the supplemental, because

I have zero doubt that it was spent. I do however have serious concerns on what it was spent on. We haven’t finished our work, but

there are serious issues being raised. I believe it comes back to

what I said before: the biggest problem agency in the Federal Government by far—nobody is even close—on financial management

and accountability is the Department of Defense.

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, when you finish that report I would like to

see it. May I respectfully suggest, Mr. Chairman, that might be

something that we need to have another hearing about.

I especially like your suggestion that these complaints that get

double payments, they should have to pay penalties and interest

when that is discovered. You said they are not having to do that

now, but I think that would be some good legislation that we could

hopefully bring out of this subcommittee.

Mr. MARTIN. Mr. Duncan, let me add to that.

Mr. DUNCAN. Yes, either one of you.

Mr. MARTIN. With the proper internal control structure and

elimination of many of those material weaknesses that have been

identified at DOD, we would know where that $9 million is.

Mr. DUNCAN. No, billion.

Mr. MARTIN. Billion. He wants to go one way and I will go the

other way.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Duncan, your point is very well taken. In fact,

one of our priorities in our agenda for this session this year is coming back to the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act,

which is really to focus on internal controls which will lead us to

either improper payments or unaccountable payments, so we do

plan on getting into that issue, and that most recent example is yet

one more that will relate right on point.

Mr. DUNCAN. You know, I mentioned the hammers and the toilet

seats, but I remember several years ago people all over the country

got upset over $500,000 they were going to spend on the Lawrence

Welk Home in South Dakota, and then in your State there was an

outhouse that the Interior Department built in some park, and I

think they spent $260,000 on it or something like that, and everybody got upset about that. But we need to get upset about this

$35.7 billion worth of improper payments and this $9 billion that

was lost in Iraq. As Mr. Walker said, he said he has zero doubt

that it was spent, but apparently spent improperly.

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Thank you very much.

Mr. PLATTS. We definitely are going to be following up on that

issue, and your interest and passion on the issue is welcomed with

the subcommittee. We will look forward to working with you.

I am going to pick up a little bit out of the order that I was looking at because I want to come back to the restatement issue, but

on the improper payments, Mr. Walker, you touched on it, that the

latest numbers are $45 billion with many agencies, and my understanding is the Department of Defense, some parts of the Department of Defense programs have done an improper payments assessment but not in total, given the size of that budget over there

we expect to see.

Do you or either of our guests, our panelists, have any guess of where you think we will end up? You know, the $45 million is

where we start at now for 2004, but I said when you used the word

‘‘trillion,’’ when we add DOD in completely we might be at trillion.

We have heard numbers of $75 billion or $80 billion as maybe accurate. Any idea?

Mr. WALKER. Since the executive branch has the primary responsibility to be able to come up with those numbers, I will let one of

my co-panelists answer that.

Mr. HAMMOND. To try to attempt to answer your question, I

think, from my understanding, I don’t have the information to be

able to estimate where it will go beyond that which is reported. I

think clearly, as you are looking at where improper payments are

likely to come from, what you want to look at is programs that

have either entitlement design or certain forms of eligibility criteria, because they become prone to various forms of practice which

may result in improper payments. And recognize that an improper

payment may be a double payment. It may also be an under-payment.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Martin.

Mr. MARTIN. I think our difficulty is actually trying to identify

improper payments. At the Department of Education we have initiated a couple of projects, data mining projects where we look at

large programs attempting to identify data anomalies. But even

with those exercises, I am not satisfied that we are really getting

close to being able to identify accurately improper payments.

So going down the road, what we are doing at Education right

now is looking at techniques and procedures to try to get our arms

around just what is the level of improper payments. Right now we

don’t know. I think it is an area where we are just getting started.

It is going to require a lot of work going forward, and it is a real

front-burner issue with OMB now. You know it is on the scorecard.

So the short-term challenge for me, and I think for many other

agencies, is to try to identify what that number is. We are just estimating, and I am not happy with the estimating techniques so far.

I think we can do a much better job.

Mr. PLATTS. I think of the $45 billion, maybe to have an accurate statement, my understanding is $40 billion is over-payments and

the other $5 billion is under, for a net loss of improper over-payments of $35 billion. But we want to not pay too much, but we also

want to pay what we owe, and we are missing it in a substantial

way.

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Mr. Martin, you are CFO of the Department of Education, but

also on behalf of OMB and a message to OMB is the continued

focus on the improper payments and that it just ties in to the broad

issue of internal controls. If we have those internal controls we can

get to the issue of these improper payments.

I put in perspective Mr. Duncan’s question how do we put these

terms. When we did the Medicare bill in late 2003, the prescription

drug plan, the estimates, I used the number of about $45 billion

per year over 10 years, because we had numbers of 400. We had

over $500 billion over 10 years, what the cost would be, including

the transition years. But if you say $45 billion a year, we are talking $450 billion every 10 years. The improper payments for 2004,

$45 billion equals the entire cost of the new prescription drug plan

for that year. That puts it in perspective for citizens to say yes,

that is one heck of a lot of money when we talk about funding that

entire program. To your fellow CFOs and to OMB in specific, that

continued focus is important.

Mr. MARTIN. Mr. Chairman, I want to say one other thing.

Mr. PLATTS. Yes?

Mr. MARTIN. Going back to our data mining project, I would say,

you know, we talk about estimates, but in terms of actual erroneous payments where we paid a vendor, say, the wrong amount

of money, I think what we identified was less than $100,000 where

there were actual—out of millions, billions. So from that standpoint

it is good, but still I say we have a lot of work to do.

Mr. PLATTS. It is one of the I will say legacies of my predecessor,

Chairman Steve Horn, on this subcommittee in pushing that legislation through in his final term here in Congress that I think longterm is going to really go a long way to cleaning up our financial

house.

I am going to yield to Mr. Towns if you have other questions.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Walker, what impact does information security weaknesses

have on Federal operations and safeguarding Federal assets? And

why is it important for agencies to establish a comprehensive security management program? Can you provide us with any specific

examples of an agency making progress in strengthening their internal controls for financial management systems, because this

seems to be a problem.

Mr. WALKER. First, like anything in life, if you don’t have a plan

you are going nowhere fast and you are not going to be able to

solve your problem, so it is important to be able to have a comprehensive and integrated plan in order to make progress. In the

absence of having a plan and effectively implementing a plan, you

have Government assets that are at risk of inadvertent or deliberate misuse or loss. You have financial information that could be

modified or destroyed. You have sensitive information that could be

inappropriately disclosed. And you have critical Government operations that could be subject to disruption. So there are a lot of significant adverse consequences, some of which can be quantified in

dollar terms and some of which don’t lend themselves to being

qualified in dollar terms.

Mr. TOWNS. I have also concerns actually relating to the lending

and credit activities within many of our Federal agencies, particuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 May 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00089 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\99783.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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larly in light of your findings. Efficiencies in determining the costs

of certain lending programs and the value of related loans—can

you speak to the material problems facing the agency community

and how to adequately determine credit programs’ cost?

Mr. WALKER. I will mention something briefly, but I might have

to provide something more for the record.

The issue of credit cost is to properly analyzing that, properly accounting for that, is a matter of increasing concern, one in which

we are continuing to do work on. It is one that we have done some

reporting on in the past, and if it is OK with you, I would like to

be able to provide something for the record on that.

Mr. PLATTS. Without objection.

Mr. WALKER. Thank you.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much.

Let me just go to one other thing. Mr. Walker, when you testified

before us last year I remember I commented on how we had leveled

off in the number of clean audits given in comparison to the prior

year. This year we seem to be reversing that course without taking

into account the number of agencies that are restating prior audit

results. Are there any broad-based themes among the five agencies

that received qualified or disclaimers on their audits? Can you tell

us what specific actions may be taken in the short term to increase

our numbers of clean audits among—forget about DOD. Forget

about that.

Mr. WALKER. It is only about $100 billion, not counting the supplemental.

Mr. TOWNS. If you can.

Mr. WALKER. Sure. I will be happy, Mr. Towns.

First, to set the record straight, while there are 18 agencies that

received clean opinions in 2003, 11 of those were restated as a result of the 2004 financial reports, but of those 11, 4 didn’t get a

clean opinion last year, so in reality it is 11 rather than 7.

Mr. TOWNS. Right. Exactly.

Mr. WALKER. Although for the record, 18 minus 11 is 7. And I

will even certify that. But in any event, I think the common denominators are some of the things that we touched on earlier: not

having effective systems and processes, not having appropriate controls, not being able to do work earlier in the year, not having the

total team committed to getting things done within the appropriate

milestones, and then some of the challenges that have been associated with reconciling budgetary results with the financial statement results. I believe those are the ones that are the primary

challenges we need to continue to work on.

Mr. TOWNS. Right. Thank you very much.

Let me just ask you very quickly, Mr. Martin, it seems to me

there are issues concerning the quality of audits received by agencies. Can you cite for us any particular concerns regarding the

agency audit process you have noted during your tenure? Are there

specific shortcomings or deficiencies within the agencies in order to

meet the information requirements for auditors to complete their

work?

Mr. MARTIN. I think there are numerous impediments to the

auditors completing their work. I guess on the Government-wide

audit there are what we call ‘‘scope limitations’’ because the information on the financial statements was not provided to the auditors in a timely manner so that they didn’t have the opportunity

to review a final set of statements, for example.

So there are issues with the auditors not being engaged in a

timely manner. Say, for example, we at the Department of Education didn’t get our books closed and our August statements done

until October, then there is no way the auditors would have enough

time to meet an November 15 deadline.

So the agency has a responsibility to produce statements in a

timely manner, which goes back to the issue of having good financial systems so you can generate statements monthly. If you can

do that with the proper controls, then you can ask your auditors

to come in and start their audit work in February or March. Or,

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as is the case in many corporations, the auditors never leave. They

are there year-round. We essentially invited our auditors to come

in year-round if they wanted to, if that would help us meet the November 15 date.

Mr. TOWNS. All right.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has expired.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

I am going to come back to the restatement issue, which will lead

me into internal controls and the quarterly reconciliation issue.

Mr. Walker, in your written testimony you reference the range of restatements going from a few million dollars to $91 billion, and

I wasn’t sure what your reference was there. You talk about restatements to CFO Act agencies for fiscal year 2000 ranged from

correcting two line items on one agency’s balance sheet to numerous line items on several. The amounts range from several million

dollars to over $91 billion. The $91 billion, can you expand on that?

Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, that $91 billion was the Department of Health and Human Services, and that was an adjustment

that was necessary with regard to that statement of budgetary resources that I mentioned before.

Mr. PLATTS. So that is one of those where hopefully we won’t

see—they are just getting transition to how to handle that reconciliation, that will be fewer and fewer need for restatements in

the future as they get better experienced at that?

Mr. WALKER. That is our hope and expectation.

Mr. PLATTS. OK. Thank you.

We have talked a lot kind of internal control issue, and we were

at the committee delighted with OMB’s Circular A–123 trying to

strengthen internal controls. As you are aware, I sponsored the

DHS financial accountability legislation where we are requiring an

audit of their internal controls because of where they are starting

at, 22 agencies with many material deficiencies, and trying to get

it right up front rather than coming back down the road and correcting it, so requiring that audit. We did not include in that legislation that every CFO agency has to have an audit of internal controls.

My question for the three of you would be: on the A–123 circular,

does it go far enough, in your opinions, or should we go further and

be looking at audits of internal controls for all agencies, knowing

that there is a substantial additional cost for that requirement?

Mr. MARTIN. I guess I wouldn’t recommend audits for all agencies. I think in some instances it might be appropriate, but a cost/

benefit of doing that I think is not there. So I would say as a general proposition no, I wouldn’t recommend it for all agencies.

Mr. PLATTS. Do you believe that the circular requirements go far

enough in establishing when you should go farther?

Mr. MARTIN. Yes, sir, Mr. Chairman, I do.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Walker or Mr. Hammond.

Mr. WALKER. This is an issue that I expect for the principals of

the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program to deal

with. One of the issues that is on our agenda is to look at the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which applies to the private sector, and to be able

to discuss whether and to what extent any of those provisions

should be applied to the Federal Government.

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I would note for the record that while we are not required to do

it, the GAO for years has voluntarily expressed an opinion on the

system of internal accounting controls for the entities that we

audit, not only the consolidated financial statements of the U.S.

Government, but the IRS, the Bureau of Public Debt, the FDIC,

and soon to be released the Securities and Exchange Commission

for the first time.

So I do think it is something the principals need to talk about.

I think we have to think about where does it make sense and

where does it not.

Clearly, every Federal agency it doesn’t make sense, and so I

think we need to think about value and risk, cost/benefit, and hopefully we will make some progress on it.

Mr. PLATTS. Mr. Walker, would you think that an agency like

DOD, which has significant internal controls, it should be more

likely a requirement, or is it an overwhelming task where they

stand, where it wouldn’t be effective at this point in time?

Mr. WALKER. Ultimately I believe that would be an agency where

it would likely meet the criteria, where it would be something you

would want to do; however, I think we have to keep in mind right

now and for the foreseeable future it is likely that the DOD is

going to end up issuing an annual statement, which it is allowed

to do by law, which basically says they are unauditable.

Clearly, they are going to have to focus on their systems, processes, and controls in order to be able to get in a position where

they are auditable. But you wouldn’t achieve much by telling them

they have to obtain an opinion on their internal controls now because they can’t even get an opinion on their financial statement.

Mr. PLATTS. Right.

Mr. Martin.

Mr. MARTIN. I think you will find if you look at the OMB circular, what it really reflects is a very thoughtful approach to implementing Sarbanes-Oxley at a Federal level to get started. It allows

for an incremental review and implementation based on the nature

of the agency, and I think, Mr. Chairman, it gets to exactly the

point you are after. It focuses attention where attention is needed

and doesn’t cast an overall blanket affecting everyone and spreading that cost.

Mr. PLATTS. And takes that cost/benefit approach.

Mr. MARTIN. Exactly.

Mr. PLATTS. OK.

Mr. HAMMOND. Mr. Chairman, it is highly likely that if one was

to try to attempt to conduct an audit of the system of internal accounting controls for the Department of Defense that it would likely be an adverse opinion if you got an opinion at all.

Mr. PLATTS. All right. And that issue, Mr. Walker, your staff is

going to be with us next week for a hearing on this issue in greater

detail, and it is something we are going to stay with because internal controls, I have come to believe—now I am starting my third

year as Chair—is so critical to everything we have talked about,

and so the greater our focus on that. That is why, with the Federal

Financial Management Improvement Act, we are kind of trying to

revitalize that, focus on that, and hand-in-hand with the OMB circular, that we hopefully will make some progress.

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Mr. HAMMOND. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. Internal controls are absolutely critical.

Mr. PLATTS. On extension of restatement, I was trying to find in

my notes—I marked up all your testimonies and have too many

notes to find what I was looking for, but, Mr. Walker, I think it

was in your testimony talking about reconciliation, or it might have

been Mr. Hammond, and the number of agencies that are not reconciling quarterly as they are supposed to. Was that in your testimony?

Mr. HAMMOND. I presented some figures, Mr. Chairman, on the

nature of reconciliation having to do with the improvement in fund

balance reconciliation over time, as well as what we have been

learning from the reconciliation dealing with intra-governmental

activity. What we have learned there is that there are a significant

number of agencies that are out of balance on intra-governmental

activity, that number is getting smaller, and what has allowed it

to get smaller is our ability to focus in on the specific items, understand the nature of the differences, give the agencies information

that they can work with and work backward from.

What we have learned is that the situation is probably worse

than we thought when we started this, but it has gotten better in

the last year and a half as we have been able to address it, which

is a difficult place to be in but it is an interesting realization for

us to understand how this information fits together and be able to

work back to understand how to get rid of the difference.

Mr. PLATTS. You helped me get ahead of what I wanted to get

to, and it was actually in Mr. Walker’s specific testimony, but it relates to the intra-governmental transfers, and that was one of the

issues I was going to move to, the size of the problem there, but

that we are making progress. As we have talked before, there is a

belief that you have identified it now, what is driving it, and that

a year from now we should see less problems within that area of

intra-governmental transfers.

Mr. HAMMOND. Yes. In fact, if I could split that problem into

three pieces for an understanding, I think it is very helpful for me.

One is there are certain proprietary accounts—for example, investments that one agency may have on the books of the Treasury

Department. They are very discrete. It is an area once we isolated

it we are able to find the differences, and for all practical purposes

we have resolved all those remaining differences in those areas.

We have a second set of activity which is the commercial type of

activity that takes place between agencies. It is a little less discrete. This is buying and selling goods or services between an agency or paying rent or buying IT services.

The difference there may stem from timing, it may stem from accounting methodology, but fundamentally the only way to fix that

area is to get the agencies together to work up a common solution

and a standardized approach to dealing with it. It is not the type

of area that can be resolved unilaterally.

And then the third area, which is the one that we really have

to come to grips with, has to do with the transfers of spending authority between agencies. In essence, this is the whole way that the

budgetary account system ties in behind the proprietary systems.

That is a much more difficult task at this point, understanding how

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these flows be able to be matched up and eliminated between, in

essence, the centralized source of those transfers as well as the

agency that ultimately ends up using those.

Mr. PLATTS. And the prognosis for all three? I mean, the first obviously we are in good shape. The second two is where we are still

working.

Mr. HAMMOND. The second one there is a considerable willingness on the part of the agencies to deal with this because it does

reflect—it ties back. That is the nice thing about the subject we are

dealing with is that everything is inter-related, and what agencies

are discovering is that some of those restatements tend to the

treatment of budgetary activity which tend to the controls over the

way they do business between agencies, so there is a vested interest in understanding where that comes from and resolving it at the

agency level.

The third problem is actually a problem in need of a solution,

and that is where we are going to spend some considerable time

over the next few months. It is not one yet that we have been able

to isolate what we think would be the answer for solving it. Once

we do that, I suspect it is going to be pretty straightforward. But

because of the nature of the way appropriations are created and

moved, it is a little more technically challenging just to get our

arms around it.

Mr. PLATTS. As you move forward, we welcome that dialog as you

try to identify that solution for that third aspect and how you are

going to move forward with a solution once it is identified.

Mr. HAMMOND. I would be happy to.

Mr. PLATTS. My followup is to you, Mr. Hammond. Really it relates to Mr. Walker’s testimony about the requirement of OMB and

Treasury that the CFOs of 35 departments and agencies reconcile

on a quarterly basis. What caught my attention was the statement

that a substantial number of these agencies did not fully perform

the required reconciliations for fiscal years 2003 and 2004. With

there being a Treasury requirement, I guess I have two questions.

One, why didn’t they? And what repercussions were there for not

doing what they are required to do?

Mr. HAMMOND. Those are excellent questions. The primary reason they didn’t reconcile, as I understand it, stems from the fact

that those transactions that were unable to be reconciled fall into

that second category of activity: agency commercial activity between each other. That commercial activity is frequently done at a

detailed sub-level and there is not sufficient information available

easily between agencies to be able to match up that activity to be

able to reconcile it. That is a solvable problem.

Mr. PLATTS. How long have they been required to reconcile quarterly?

Mr. HAMMOND. For about a year.

Mr. PLATTS. So that is new. So it is fair to say this time around

it is a newer requirement so they didn’t have the detail they needed; but if a year from now they still can’t reconcile because they

don’t have the detail required to reconcile, then there is a little

more responsibility that they are not fulfilling?

Mr. HAMMOND. Right. Exactly. And that would be a more fundamental problem, because what we do is we provide not only the

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tools and the information, but we also provide feedback. We prepare, in essence, a report card type of format of agency performance on our reporting requirements at the end of the year, which

we then send back to the CFO of each of the agencies.

So if you were to see a situation where it would constantly stay

the same, that would be indicative of a need for further attention

at the agency level, and I think both OMB and Treasury would be

committed to try and followup on that.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you.

Mr. Towns, did you have any other questions?

Mr. TOWNS. Yes.

Mr. PLATTS. Sure.

Mr. TOWNS. This would be to you, Mr. Martin. I am trying to understand so we can be helpful along the way, and I really, really

mean that. Maybe you can sort of help me through this process a

little.

Many agencies place extensive reliance, as I understand it, on

contractor support to prepare the financial statement. I would

think that would affect the agency’s ability to build and sustain a

long-term financial management capability. Don’t they have to take

bids and then, if the contractors don’t do what—I mean, walk me

through this process. I am trying to make certain I fully understand every aspect.

Mr. MARTIN. I think what you will find at our department and

probably throughout Government is that contractors are, especially

in the IT area and the accounting area, that there is significant

level of contractor participation, and what we are trying to do at

the Department of Education essentially is to wean ourselves from

this kind of contractor support.

I looked at some of my senior CFO staff a couple of years ago

and I said, ‘‘Bring in the resumes. I want to see the resumes of the

contractors and I want to see the resumes of our staff.’’ Our people

are just as good on paper, and in many instances better, than the

contract staff. So I said to my folks, ‘‘Why do we need contractors

to do this work? Let me know how many contract hours we have,

and starting now we are going to reduce the number of contract

hours so we are not dependent on those people. You folks should

be able to produce financial statements without significant contractor intervention.’’

Mr. TOWNS. So my concern is real?

Mr. MARTIN. You are right on point.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

As you were correcting the record for our accuracy on math, I referenced the FFMIA Act next week. We are actually doing the Federal Managers Financial Integrity Act next week, FMFIA. My staff

director said we have talked openly about one of our efforts of the

committee this year is reorganizing the dozen or 15 different financial management acts of the last 20 years into a more cohesive and

easily understood and implemented plan for all of our financial

managers throughout the Federal Government. One benefit would

be to get rid of all the acronyms so I don’t get myself confused here.

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On that point, that reorganization effort, we are certainly going

to look for insights and guidance from all three of you and your

agencies and your experience as we look to try to bring all this together in a more efficient way.

I want to turn. Mr. Walker, we have touched on, in a minimal

sense but regularly throughout today’s hearing, on the Department

of Defense and that 600-pound gorilla out there that we need to

deal with if we really want to get a clean opinion on the consolidated Federal Government statements. One of the issues there as

chief management officer and your staff and your office has been

working with the committee on how to approach that issue. I was

wondering if you could give us your emphasis or arguments on the

importance in moving in that direction. We talked a little bit before

we started the hearing. And then if there is an update where GAO

stands on maybe proposed legislation language, that would be

great.

Mr. WALKER. First, based upon our latest update of GAO’s highrisk report, which we issued in the last week of January of this

year, DOD now has 14 of 25 high-risk areas; 8 are DOD only, and

they also share the six Government-wide areas. That is two more

than they had last year. And several of these have been on the list

since the beginning.

I have become convinced, along with my colleagues at GAO, that

a number of things are going to have to happen in order for DOD

to effectively deal with these high-risk areas, of which financial

management is but one and it is related to a number of other ones,

such as the modernization of their information systems, etc.

One of the things that I believe is that if you go to the Department of Defense and you ask them who is in charge, who is responsible, who is accountable, who is qualified, who is resourced, and

who is in the right position to be in charge of business transformation, I don’t know that you would get an answer. Or if you

did get an answer, you wouldn’t get a consistent answer. That is

a problem.

We need to recognize the reality that it will take years to address

DOD’s high-risk areas, and it will take the sustained attention of

a highly qualified individual with a proven track record of success

in dealing with these types of issues over a sustained period of

time.

Our view is that one way to go about that is to create a new position. You could call it ‘‘Chief Management Officer,’’ or you could call

it ‘‘Chief Operating Officer.’’ The words shouldn’t matter, but it

needs to be somebody at the Deputy Secretary level for management. A position that is not a substitute for but a complement to

the current Deputy Secretary position. We need somebody with a

proven track record of success in both the public sector and the private sector who woule focus on various fundamental business

transformation efforts.

We need to have somebody, I believe, who has a term appointment, e.g., 7 years, because history has shown that, irrespective of

whether you are in the private sector, the public sector, or the notfor-profit sector, on average it takes 7 plus years to effectuate a

needed transformation, and in the Government it takes longer beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 May 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\99783.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cause it is not used to changing as much, much less the Department of Defense with so many layers and levels and systems.

We also ought to have a performance contract for that person. I

am pleased to say that the Defense Business Board, which advises

Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, of which I am

an ex officio member—and I will go to one of those meetings tonight and tomorrow—has recommended that the Department of

Defense establish such a position.

While the Department of Defense could theoretically do this administratively by taking one of their current allocations, you can’t

achieve certain things administratively. You can’t necessarily

achieve the type of stature, the term appointment that I believe is

important, nor can you institutionalize the issue.

There is no question in my mind that Secretary Rumsfeld on

down is committed to trying to deal with this problem. There is absolutely no question in my mind on that. But, quite frankly, they

have a lot of other things they are having to deal with and there

are enough things going on day to day that each of the Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries and Service Secretaries have to

deal with, and everybody is focused on their own silo or line item.

We need somebody who is focused full time to make this happen.

As far as the audit, while the DOD has a goal, they don’t have

a comprehensive, integrated, and credible plan with appropriate

milestones and accountability mechanisms to achieve this goal. In

orer to achieve a goal you need to have a plan, and they don’t have

one yet. They need one. And when they approach it, they are going

to have to approach it in a matrixed fashion. They are going to

have to work over time to try to get more entities that can get

clean opinions and more line items that are cleaned up so that over

time they will move to where they will get a qualified opinion, and

hopefully before the end of my term a clean opinion.

Mr. PLATTS. Before I continue I want to recognize we have been

joined by our subcommittee vice chairlady, the gentlelady from

North Carolina, Virginia Foxx. We are delighted to have you with

us.

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry there was a

conflict and I am late.

Mr. PLATTS. As a new member here, you will find that we are

called upon to be in four spots at once on a regular basis, so we

are delighted to have you be with us and look forward to working

with you and with our ranking member, Mr. Towns, as we go forward.

Mr. Walker, I want to followup on what you have already said.

I share your belief. We have had great efforts. You look at Secretary Rumsfeld September 10, 2001, when he lays out his priorities, one of which that day is financial management at DOD, and

the events of the next day understandably run the course here and

dominated their challenges. I think that is one of the challenges for

Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. Their priority, as it needs to be, is

fighting war and winning war. While they have a great intent and

had some good people—Dov Zakheim and others—the fact of that

turnover, the CFO, the Deputy CFO, the Deputy Under Secretary

for Management, all those things have led—I think you said earVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 May 25, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00099 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\99783.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lier, a well-intended goal, but without a plan or ability to move forward to reach the goal.

I look forward to working with you again, when CMO or whatever office or title we want to have. One of the things you mentioned, though, in creating it was doing it statutorily instead of administratively, which I agree with because of that permanence if

you do it administratively. You can say we are going to do it for

a 7-year term, but change of administrations one way or the other

is going to be a change in 3-plus years from now, whether that continues if we do it statutorily.

You also mentioned performance contract. Could you expand on

what you envision there?

Mr. WALKER. Yes. A performance contract wouldn’t require a

statutory provision, but the concept being that this person would

be responsible and accountable for making sure that comprehensive

and integrated plan was developed, that there were key milestones,

and that appropriate accountability mechanisms are in place. I

think it would be appropriate to consider having some type of performance contract whereby the individual would be held accountable for achieving those key milestones, obviously with appropriate

accountability for other parties that are contributing, as well. That

should affect how much they get paid, and it also should affect

their job security.

Mr. PLATTS. I appreciate that because it kind of goes to my question about reconciliation issues. I asked what are the consequences.

One of the challenges, I think, when we try to analogize SarbanesOxley and other issues of the private sector to public sector is in

my 2 years I have found that we often aren’t doing what we are

supposed to be doing, what statues require in the area of financial

management. Where there is a carrot/stick aspect to that would be

important.

On the issue, update where you stand on proposed language. Still

in the early——

Mr. WALKER. We are very close. We are happy to provide technical assistance to the committee in that regard.

Mr. PLATTS. We greatly appreciate it and look forward to moving

forward on that issue with you, because it is something that for

DOD in particular, and as I have said when we have had NASA

here and DOD, helping them to clean up their financial house is

going to allow them to focus more efficiently and effectively on

their primary missions, whether it be going to space with NASA or,

you know, the efforts of defending our Nation at DOD.

Virginia, did you have anything, any questions?

Ms. FOXX. Not at this time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Not at this time? OK.

I want to come back to one other issue, Mr. Walker, you touched

on, and I know you probably spent a fair amount of time maybe

at the Budget Committee today. When we talk about that $43 trillion of liabilities that are out there, we could probably spend days

on all of them. Social Security though is one that is on the front

burner, and a lot of discussions in your testimony. You also gave

to us a copy of your statement, which I appreciated receiving, your

address a week or two ago with State and local governments and

some of the challenges out there. You referenced that you want to

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go into more detail in your question and answer period, and I obviously wasn’t there for that.

When I read your testimony and the need for changes, some of

the ideas that are out there such as the wage index for initial calculation of benefits, you know, the cap on the payroll tax at roughly

$90,000, the idea of personal accounts, could you touch on those as

you read what ones we should focus on most, or combination of, or

you think is going to allow us specifically for Social Security to get

on the right track?

Mr. WALKER. As you know, Mr. Chairman, GAO has done quite

a bit of work in this area already. I expect that we will be doing

some more. We have come up with criteria that we believe any Social Security reform proposal should be evaluated based on in order

to make sure that it is a level playing field and a fair and balanced

analysis.

As you know, I used to be a trustee of Social Security and Medicare from 1990 through 1995, so I am pretty deep on these issues.

One of the things that you referred to me before that I noted in

my speech at the National Press Club last week was I really believe that, while Social Security does not face immediate crisis, it

does face a large and growing financing problem that is getting bigger every day, and it would be prudent to address sooner rather

than later. I think one reason is because Social Security is only

$3.7 trillion of our $43 trillion challenge.

The other thing that I mentioned was I believe that Congress has

an opportunity, working with the President, who obviously would

have to sign the bill, to exceed the expectations of every generation

of Americans in doing Social Security reform. You don’t have that

opportunity in Medicare. You do have that opportunity in Social

Secretary.

The reason I say that is if you take individuals at a certain age

or older—the President has suggested 55, but that may or may not

be the right age—and you say those individuals will not be affected

in any way, shape, or form, they will get the current deal, and

those are the ones who are most concerned because they don’t have

time to make adjustments.

If you then take people younger than whatever age you select—

for example, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y—you

could make progressively greater changes, whether it be on the replacement rates, the retirement ages, the indexing formulas, whatever, but progressively greater changes the younger you are but

phased in over a number of years, you can end up giving everybody

more than they think they are going to get—not necessarily more

than has been promised, but more than they think they are going

to get.

For example, my father, who is retired, is going to get every

dime. I am assuming there is going to be some hair cut to my benefits. My children are assuming there is going to be a bigger hair

cut. The fact of the matter is that if we act soon there is an opportunity to make more modest changes than otherwise will have to

be made, and hopefully it will give us some credibility and some

confidence to start dealing with some of the bigger challenges that

are going to be a lot tougher to deal with, are going to take many

years, and where you are not going to exceed the expectations of

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potentially any generation. The prima facie example of that is

Medicare.

Mr. PLATTS. And your point of building credibility is one that I

think is so important, because these issues politically have been

that third rail—Social Security, Medicare there now as well. If we

are able to take on the issue—and Mr. Hammond referenced earlier

the third category of intra-governmental. A problem in need of a

solution goes to Social Security. We should all agree that it is a

problem. The question is: what is the solution and how do we go

about implementing it? If we can get to that discussion, it is a lot

more likely to be a policy focus instead of partisan focused, as it

is currently. But if we do right on Social Security, then we will

have that trust of the people so when we take on Medicare and

that huge unfunded liability, that we can do it in a way that will

do as best we can by everybody in a fair and honest fashion.

I use my own family, the debate between 2042, which is in the

consolidated financial statements, versus 2052 in CBO. I said my

daughter is 5. She doesn’t get retired until at least 2067. Either

date, we have a problem. And I have got a Mom who is 71 who

is already there. So I am looking at it from a sense of protecting

those there and doing right by those who are many, many decades

away from getting there.

Your frankness on this issue, not just in the past month but for

many years, is—I am sure you have felt like you are crying out and

no one was listening. Well, finally we have a President and I hope

House and Senate that are closely listening to the message you

have been conveying and documenting so effectively and are going

to act.

I think President Bush has said—and I had the pleasure of being

with him yesterday, about 15 of us House Members—in the end

people respect if you are willing to take on problems and actually

present solutions and are willing to act to solve problems, as opposed to just passing them on, which is, as you have well told us,

what we have been doing for years.

Ms. Foxx.

Ms. FOXX. Yes. Mr. Walker, I appreciate very much what the

chairman was just saying. Not having had the privilege to have

heard you before, I wonder if you are saying you wouldn’t characterize it as a crisis. That seems to be what the popular press picks

up in a lot of cases is that it is no crisis, therefore we don’t need

to deal with it. The chairman is indicating that you have tried in

times past to indicate to people that there is a real problem.

Do you have any other suggestions? Or you may want to tell me

this later if you have already said it in the meeting. How do you

get people’s attention. If you don’t want to call it a crisis, then how

do you get people’s attention that if nothing is done it soon will become a crisis?

Again, I don’t need you to go into great detail, but it is obvious

you have given it some thought.

Mr. WALKER. The first thing is before you can solve a problem

there has to be broad-based consensus that there is a problem that

needs to be solved, and there also has to be at least majority agreement that—I mean on both sides of the aisle, a majority of total

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members and of the population hopefully—that believe that it is

prudent to act sooner rather than later.

I would be happy to provide you and your office my testimony before the House Budget Committee—I will give you one today. It

lays out a number of reasons why it is prudent that we act sooner

rather than later.

The biggest reason is you can look at it micro or macro. On a

micro level, the sooner you act the less dramatic the changes have

to be, the more time you have to phase it in, because time is currently working against us. The problem is getting bigger every day

because of known demographic trends.

From a macro standpoint, this is a small downpayment on the work that has to be done. It is $3.7 trillion out of $43 trillion. We

need to start solving some of these long-range imbalances. With Social Security you have the potential to exceed the expectation of all

generations of Americans, that sounds like to me it could be a win.

I think part of the problem is there has been too much focus on

individual elements of a possible proposal like, for example, individual accounts. I mean, individual accounts may or may not be

part of a comprehensive solution to Social Security, but even if they

are, they are only going to be a piece of a package and other things

have to happen in order to assure the solvency and sustainability

of the system.

I have been very concerned because there is no doubt in my mind

I believe that a clear and compelling case can be made that it is

prudent to act now. At the same point in time, we are not off on

a very good foot because it is too partisan, it is too ideological, and

it is too focused on individual elements of a potential reform package rather than reaching the first objective. The first objective is

to obtain agreement that we have a problem. It is a large and

growing problem. We need to solve it, and it is prudent to solve it

sooner rather than later. Once we are there, then we can talk

about how best to go about that, what are the possible elements

and related tradeoffs, what are the pros and cons.

I honestly believe, based on my experience as a trustee, and

being on two Social Security Reform Commissions in the past, having been involved in national town hall meetings around the country on these issues in the past, that the American people are a lot

smarter than many give them credit. I give them a lot of credit.

I am sure you all do, too. They are very smart. You give them the

facts. You speak the truth. They will empower you to act.

Mr. PLATTS. And that education process, what the problem is

today is a critically important first step, because I describe it as a

problem that we need to address. If we don’t, it will be a crisis for

when we reach that 2018 or 2042, whatever year in the future it

will become a crisis if we don’t address the problem we have today.

Mr. WALKER. That is true, and part of the problem is that many

times Government historically has not addressed issues until a crisis is upon us, which is fundamentally imprudent given these

known demographic trends and our long-range imbalances.

Let me give you an example real quickly and I will move out of

this. In 1983, when the Greenspan Commission was created, we

were within weeks of not sending out the checks on time. Now, believe me, that would be a crisis. There would be a big signal.

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Mr. PLATTS. You wouldn’t want to be in our District offices when

that happens.

Ms. FOXX. Right.

Mr. WALKER. I would say there would be consequences. But the

fact of the matter is today’s equivalent of 1983 is 2042. But it

would be fundamentally imprudent to wait until 2042, not just because of Social Security; because of the much broader fiscal imbalance challenge that we face.

Mr. PLATTS. Yes. I want to just conclude. In your testimony, Mr.

Walker, to put a plug in something we are working on, a number

of places in your written testimony you talk about the way we are

reporting not adequately showing the results that agencies are getting for the taxpayer dollars and the importance of program review

and ongoing process at the Department of Education and Treasury

and with our legislation, our PAR Act legislation that we moved

last fall out of the full committee. We didn’t have time to get it on

the House floor schedule before the end, but I have talked to Chairman Davis and we will likely move it in March in the full committee. It is something that we are trying to help, again, from a statutory standpoint, put some permanence into what the administration is doing, I think, a wonderful job going through the part process of trying to be more results oriented and not just, ‘‘You have

X dollars and spent X dollars appropriately,’’ but, ‘‘Did you achieve

any results for the American people when you spent X dollars?’’

Our legislation is going to try to help push that in a statutory

sense.

I want to thank the three of you again for your several hours

here today with us and your preparation and your day-in and dayout work. We look forward very much to continuing our interactions with each of you and your offices as we move forward over

these coming 2 years.

Mr. WALKER. If I can, Mr. Chairman——

Mr. PLATTS. Sure.

Mr. WALKER [continuing]. I would like to thank you again for

holding this hearing and making it an annual occurrence. Second,

I would like to thank all the very capable GAO staff who worked

on this year’s financial statement audit, because without their efforts it just wouldn’t happen.

Thank you.

Mr. PLATTS. As I left the capital on December 15th, my daily

commute back to my home in York, I thought I heard a big sigh

of relief out of GAO that it was all done and submitted. We know

that is quite a herculean effort that goes into that audit process.

We have a couple of things, I guess. We are going to keep the

record open for 2 weeks that you are going to followup with, Mr.

Towns, any information you want to submit.

I want to recognize staff from both sides, as well, who help make

these things run smoothly.

This hearing stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 3:57 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Jon C. Porter follows:]

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