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95–420 PDF 2015

GAO’S DUPLICATION REPORT AT FIVE YEARS: 

RECOMMENDATIONS REMAIN UNADDRESSED 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 14, 2015 

Serial No. 114–30 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 


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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

MARK WALKER, North Carolina 

ROD BLUM, Iowa 

JODY B. HICE, Georgia 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

EARL L. ‘‘BUDDY’’ CARTER, Georgia 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin 

WILL HURD, Texas 

GARY J. PALMER, Alabama 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

TED LIEU, California 

BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey 

STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands 

MARK DeSAULNIER, California 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Staff Director 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

KATY ROTHER, Counsel 

SHARON CASEY, Deputy Chief Clerk 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 14, 2015 .............................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

The Hon. Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 1 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6 

The Hon. Beth Cobert, Deputy Director for Management, The Office of Management and Budget 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 40 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 42 

APPENDIX 

Chairman Chaffetz Opening Statement ................................................................ 84 

2015–04–21 GAO 4–14 Hearing Responses ........................................................... 86 

RESPONSE Cobert-OMB-Blum QFRs ................................................................... 88 


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GAO’S DUPLICATION REPORT AT FIVE YEARS: 

RECOMMENDATIONS REMAIN UNADDRESSED 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 2154, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jason Chaffetz [chairman of 

the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Chaffetz, Mica, Duncan, Jordan, 

Walberg, Amash, Massie, Meadows, Mulvaney, Buck, Walker, 

Blum, Hice, Russell, Carter, Grothman, Palmer, Cummings, Maloney, Norton, Connolly, Duckworth, Kelly, Lawrence, Lieu, Plaskett, 

DeSaulnier, and Grisham. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Committee on Oversight and Government 

Reform will come to order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. 

This afternoon, the United States Government—or sorry—this 

morning, the United States Government Accountability Office released its annual report on duplicative Federal programs. It has 

been the case for the past 5 years there’s a vast opportunity for the 

Federal Government to save hard-earned taxpayer dollars. 

One day before Americans have to on the—one day before Americans have to pay their taxes, the GAO report identifies 24 new 

areas where Federal Government agencies are wasting resources. 

To help remedy this waste and improve the effectiveness of our 

government, the report recommends more than 66 actions to save 

money. Some examples from this year’s report include eight Federal agencies administer more than 100 programs to support individuals with serious mental illness. The GAO also identifies 42 

Federal, State, and local nonemergency medical transportation programs that currently lack coordination, leading to poor outcomes. 

Further, the GAO noted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, often referred to as NOAA, maintains 21 

separate systems to monitor sea surface temperature and 14 to 

measure just one—just ocean surface wind speeds. Even NOAA has 

admitted this level of redundancy is unnecessary. 

Finally, the report also draws—also draws new attention to the 

broken down FOIA process at the Department of Homeland Security. Today, Department of Homeland Security is responsible for 

more than half of all reported backlog FOIA requests. This is completely unacceptable. 

All told, in the first 5 years of the report, GAO has identified 

more than 200 areas with wasted Federal resources. As a result, 


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GAO has recommended more than 500 actions to save money and 

approve efficiency. By implementing about a third of these, GAO 

recommendations in prior years, the government managed to save 

roughly $20 billion, which is a start, but more needs to be done. 

Addressing the remaining recommendations has the potential to save American taxpayers $80 billion by the year 2023. Over and 

again, the GAO’s duplication reports have shown how precious dollars are wasted when Federal agencies fail to work together. GAO 

has specifically identified dozens of areas where increased guidance, oversight, and coordination from OMB would create greater 

efficiency. These would also reduce costs to the taxpayers, including the way for the Federal Government to acquire needed goods 

and services. 

Yet OMB to date has only fully addressed about a third of GAO’s 

recommended actions. It has to do better to fully justify the taxpayers’ trust in its mission. With Americans projected to pay the 

government $1.5 trillion in individual income taxes, we must ensure greater return on taxpayer investment by reducing inefficiencies and redundancies. 

I want to thank the GAO for, once again, providing Congress and 

the executive branch with a road map to achieve the needed savings. There are literally thousands of good men and women who 

work tirelessly through the course of a year and beyond, to develop 

these reports, and we very much appreciate it. Look forward to 

hearing from the witnesses on how the government can make 

greater progress in achieving a more efficient, effective, and accountable government. That’s what we’re all here to do, and this 

is a good opportunity for both sides of the aisle, the administration, 

the GAO, to all to come together and discuss these topics and figure out how we can make more of the precious Federal dollars. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. I want to let members know that we will— 

I will hold the record open for 5 legislative days for any members 

who would like to submit a written statement. 

We will now recognize our panel of witnesses. I am pleased to 

welcome the Honorable Gene Dodaro, Comptroller General of the 

United States Government Accountability Office. Mr. Dodaro is accompanied by a panel of staff from the GAO behind him whose expertise may be needed during the questioning. 

We also have the Honorable Beth Cobert, deputy director for 

management at the Office of Management and Budget. Did I pronounce it properly? 

Ms. COBERT. Yes. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Okay. Good. 

We welcome you. Pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will 

be sworn before they testify. We will also swear in those accompanying Mr. Dodaro who may be offering testimony. And so if you 

all would rise. 

Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you’re about 

to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing by the truth? 

Thank you. Let the record reflect that all members—all people 

who raised their hand answered in the affirmative. 

And prior to having our witnesses testify, we’re going to now recognize the ranking member, Mr. Cummings, from Maryland for 5 

minutes. 


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Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding what has become a critical annual hearing for our committee 

and for making sure that GAO’s report gets the attention it warrants. 

Today’s hearing will focus on GAO’s fifth annual report on duplicative programs and opportunities for cost savings. It will allow us 

to zero in on areas where we can work together to cut waste and 

save money. That is what this committee is all about and that is 

what our constituents expect of us. 

Unfortunately, today’s report from GAO indicates that Congress 

has been doing far worse than the executive branch in implementing recommendations to eliminate duplication and to promote 

the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government. According to GAO’s report, the executive branch has fully or partially 

completed 86 percent of GAO’s recommendations, while Congress is 

struggling around 45 percent. Clearly Congress must do a better 

job of focusing on its own actions, rather than trying to blame everything on the executive branch. Specifically, GAO has made 369 

recommendations for the executive branch and 317 have now been 

fully or partially completed. In contrast, GAO has made 69 recommendations for Congress, but only 31 of those have been fully 

or partially completed. 

This year’s report from GAO highlights some areas where Congress could legislate to eliminate waste and duplication. For example, GAO recommended that Congress consider permanently rescinding the entire $1.6 billion balance of U.S. Enrichment Corporation fund. According to GAO, the Congress authorized this revolving fund in the U.S. Treasury for environmental cleanup costs 

associated with disposing of depleted uranium at two specific facilities and for expenses related to the fund’s privatization. GAO has 

determined that both of the funds purposes have been completed, 

but only Congress can permanently rescind the entire balance of 

the fund. 

Overall, it is clear that significant progress has been made in implementing GAO’s recommendations over the past 4 years. GAO 

made a total of about 440 recommendations between 2011 and 

2014, and about 348 of these have been fully or partially addressed 

by the executive branch and Congress. GAO estimates that these 

efforts have resulted in about $20 billion in financial benefits to 

date, with another $80 billion in savings projected through 2023. 

We must recognize these accomplishments and shine a light on 

them. We want them to become the model that we’ll strive to 

achieve. 

And at the same time, it is also clear that more work simply 

needs to be done. For example, GAO identified potential duplication in laboratory inspections. GAO highlighted one laboratory that 

had been inspected eight times by the Environmental Protection 

Agency and the Drug and Food Administration over an 8-year 

span. Of course these facilities must be rigorously inspected. But 

if relevant information had been shared between the two agencies, 

they might have reduced duplication and been able to direct attention to other needed inspections. Better leveraging of resources and 

potentially increasing the number of facilities inspected serves not 

only the best interest of the agencies, but of the taxpayers as well. 


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To conclude, I want to thank both of our witnesses, Mr. Dodaro 

and Ms. Cobert, for being here today. Mr. Dodaro, you and your 

talented staff, are providing a critical service to the Congress and 

the American people by issuing this report. I also appreciate the 

work that you and your colleagues at GAO do every day to increase 

the effectiveness and efficiency of the Federal Government and to 

help ensure that our tax dollars are spent wisely. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Thank the gentleman. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. I will now recognize Mr. Dodaro for 5 minutes. 

WITNESS STATEMENTS 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE GENE L. DODARO 

Mr. DODARO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to you. Ranking Member Congressman Cummings, members 

of the committee, I’m very pleased to be here today to discuss 

GAO’s 2015 report. 

We identified 24 new areas with 66 recommendations. These include a recommendation to the Congress to create a formal coordinating group to focus on the oversight of consumer protection 

issues. There are 20 different agencies involved in this effort at 

least. There’s fragmentation, overlap of responsibilities, and greater 

efficiencies that can be achieved as well as better protection to the 

public. 

We also have recommendations for greater coordination among 

the 42 programs and six agencies that provide nonemergency medical transportation. Here we’re concerned that not enough cooperation has been gained yet from the Medicaid and VA programs, 

which are big players. And there’s not a cost sharing agreement in 

place. The council coordinating this activity hasn’t met since 2008. 

This is a big issue, particularly with the aging of our population 

and the need for these nonemergency medical services among the 

aged, the disabled, and those without the means to provide their 

own transportation for needed health care. 

We also identified a component of provider within the DOD 

healthcare system that was set up originally in 1982. It’s now 

being duplicated by the TRICARE program, which was established 

in the 1990s, and we recommend that that component can be eliminated, thus saving millions of dollars with a careful transition to 

ensure that nobody has interruption in services that are provided. 

We also recommend reexamination of the Strategic Petroleum 

Reserve. With U.S. production now at record levels, and reserves 

growing both in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the—and private sector reserves, we now hold much more than we have to to 

meet international requirements in the reserve. This could free up 

potentially, based on the reexamination, oil that could be sold to 

reap billions of dollars that could be used for other government priorities and also reduce the operating costs of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is aging and in need of further repair. 

We also identified areas that were established of 11 hospitals 

that provided cancer treatment in the 1980s when most cancer 


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treatment was in-patient concern. Now, more hospitals can provide 

it as outpatient concerns. And if those hospitals were treated the 

same way other hospitals that are treating cancer payments now 

and at a level playing field, the Federal Government could save 

$500 million a year in Medicare spending, healthcare spending. So 

these are a few of the examples. 

As has been mentioned, in the past 4 years, we’ve had over 440 

recommendations. Thirty seven percent have been fully implemented. Thirty nine percent partially. Twenty percent not at all. 

The amount of money that’s been saved so far has been $20 billion 

in implementing our recommendations, with another $80 billion in 

the works that should be achieved in the coming years. But there’s 

plenty of money left on the table here in areas that can produce 

additional billion dollars in savings and efficiencies. We’ve grouped 

them into a number of categories. You could be more aggressive on 

strategic sourcing, the leverage, the government’s buying power. 

Right now, OMB is moving on this as Beth will talk about, but we 

need to be more aggressive in setting targets and to achieve the 

savings that are necessary. 

In February, I was before this committee talking about IT operations and the acquisitions. We put it on our high-risk list across 

government. Their concerted efforts could save millions of dollars, 

if not billions of dollars in waste and inefficiencies in IT operations. 

We’ve had many recommendations to streamline activities at the 

Defense Department to reduce overhead, help control their 

healthcare costs, reduce the cost of weapon systems. We have recommendations to reform Medicare and Medicaid payment processes 

and oversight processes to reduce healthcare spending, which is 

much needed at this point in time. We’ve got recommendations to 

also increase tax revenues and to rationalize some benefit programs where there’s some overlapping and duplication in benefit 

programs. 

So I appreciate the opportunity to be here today and discuss 

these areas in further detail during the questions-and-answer period when it’s appropriate. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Thank you. We appreciate that. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Dodaro follows:] 


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Chairman CHAFFETZ. I will now recognize Ms. Cobert for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BETH COBERT 

Ms. COBERT. Thank you, Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member 

Cummings, and distinguished members of the committee for inviting me to discuss the Federal Government’s efforts to reduce fragmentation, overlap, and duplication across programs. I appreciate 

the opportunity to discuss this important area because it is critical 

that the administration and Congress work together to advance reforms that help sustain a high performing, cost effective government. 

GAO is a key partner in OMB’s efforts to create more efficiencies 

and cost savings. GAO’s 2015 report provides helpful updates on 

actions the administration and Congress have taken on recommendations from previous reports and offers new recommendations. I also particularly appreciate this opportunity to testify along 

with Comptroller Gene Dodaro. Whether it is a GAO high risk list, 

this report, or other specific issues, Gene and I are regularly working together towards the common goal of creating positive outcomes 

for citizens and thoughtful and careful spending of taxpayer dollars. 

GAO’s report recognizes some of the overall progress the administration has made since the initial areas of fragmentation, overlap, 

and duplication were identified in 2011. The executive branch and 

Congress together, have significantly engaged in 337 of the 440 

broad areas GAO has identified over the past 4 years. Within these 

broad areas, the executive branch has made progress on 79 percent 

of GAO’s recommendations, with 30 percent fully addressed and 49 

percent partially addressed. 

The President’s management agenda provides a strong foundation for tackling duplication, fragmentation, and overlap. The 

President’s management agenda is built on four core pillars; effectiveness, efficiency, economic growth, and people in culture. By focusing on how we can simplify processes to make services better, 

finding ways to share best practices and information more effectively across the Federal Government and with the public and 

leveraging the talents of America’s Federal workforce, the administration is driving an agenda that enables the government to operate more efficiently in the 21st Century. 

Addressing the government’s critical priorities requires focus, 

discipline, and collaboration, often across organizational boundaries. Whether it is in corporate, nonprofit or government entities, 

in my experience, it boils down to prioritizing, focus, and working 

together. 

One key way that OMB helps support this prioritization and collaboration is through the agency priority goal and cross-agency priority goals established as part of the Government Performance and 

Results Modernization Act, GPRA. 

The administration is pleased to update you on progress in several specific areas related to GAO’s extensive recommendations as 

well as the President’s management agenda. I’d like to share a few 

specific examples. Saving on real property costs. Through the administration’s Freeze the Footprint Policy, agencies achieved a 21.4 


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million square foot reduction in office and warehouse space between Fiscal year 2012 and Fiscal Year 2014. And in Fiscal Year 

2014 alone, the government disposed of 7,350 buildings, 47 million 

square feet of space and eliminated $17 million of annual operation 

and maintenance costs as a result of Freeze the Footprint. We recently issued the national strategy for real property, which builds 

on these efforts and requires agencies to reduce their real property 

footprint going forward. 

Acquisition. Through strategic sourcing efforts, the administration has generated $417 million in savings and reduced contract 

duplication by up to 40 percent in targeted areas, but we know we 

need and can do more. We’re building on the success through our 

category management efforts, an approach that allows us to further 

reduce duplicative acquisition practices and better leverage government-wide buying power and expertise. 

Smarter IT delivery. Through the data-driven PortfolioStat process, the government has achieved more than $2.3 billion in savings 

in the past 3 years around spending on IT. 

Eliminating homelessness. Through strong collaborative work 

across agencies through the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and community partnerships, the administration has made 

significant progress toward the President’s ambitious goal of ending homelessness, particularly among veterans. Veterans homelessness is down 33 percent, and people experiencing chronic homelessness on a single night is down 21 percent with great cooperation 

across agencies on this effort. The Fiscal year 2016 budget also continues to propose reforms and target duplicative programs for reduction or elimination. In the President’s first six budgets, the administration identified on average more than 150 cuts, consolidations, and savings, averaging more than $23 billion each year. 

We are also working to oversee the implementation of two new 

key pieces of legislations that will further strengthen efforts to improve efficiency and save taxpayer resources. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, the DATA Act; and the Federal Information Technology Reform Act, FITARA. 

Our efforts and success to date showed that we can improve the 

way government works and provide the American people with an 

efficient, effective, and high performing government. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress and the GAO and other 

stakeholders to identify additional opportunities to create a government that makes a significant tangible difference in the economy 

and the lives of the American people and spends its dollars wisely. 

I thank the committee for holding this hearing and for your commitment to improving Federal performance. I’d be pleased to answer any questions you may have. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Thank you. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Cobert follows:] 


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Chairman CHAFFETZ. We will now recognize the gentleman from 

Tennessee, Mr. Duncan, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this what I think is a very, very 

important hearing. And I first want to join the ranking member, 

Mr. Cummings, in complimenting the GAO for the $20 billion in 

savings thus far and the what I see as the potential of $80 billion 

in the years ahead. 

I can—one area that’s of great interest to me for many years has 

been this disposal of excess Federal property. The chairman and I 

both have worked on that for several years. And I notice that the 

OMB says they have a national strategy in place, but the GAO 

says or does not agree. 

Can you explain why the GAO does not agree with the approach 

that OMB is taking on this thus far, Mr. Dodaro? And then we’ll 

have Ms. Cobert respond. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. The information in our report about the status 

of actions taken by agencies was as of March 6 last month. OMB’s 

strategy just came out at the end of March, March 25. So we believe that it’s responsive to our recommendation, in part, and are 

pleased that the national strategy has how been issued. It needs— 

it’s a document that’s going to require some additional development 

and support on the details to implement it, but it addresses some 

of our concerns so far. So we’re pleased with the document, but it’s 

a timing difference, Mr. Congressman. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Okay. Well, then, another area that we held a 

hearing on last year was this $80 billion in annual purchases of 

new technology. And I’m wondering if you think that’s an area 

where there are potentially some pretty big savings in that regard 

because I know that they say that all the computers are obsolete 

the day they’re taken out of the box. The technology is moving so 

fast, yet much of that technology—and it seems that any time a 

government agency runs—has cost overruns or has real problems, 

they say their technology is out of date. And I’m wondering what’s 

being done, if you feel enough is being done to take advantage of 

potential savings there. Because a lot of that technology, even 

though it may not be brand new, is still very useable. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. No, I do not think enough is being done. I 

think there have been some steps made. You know, I was so concerned about this area that I added it to our high-risk list across 

the Federal Government. 

There are really a couple of dimensions. One, is more money is 

going in to continue to support the legacy systems, the old systems 

from the past, and that’s a trend that’s different than what’s happening in other parts of the economy, and we think more could be 

done there to review ongoing spending operations to see if there 

can be greater efficiencies and drive down the cost. 

Secondly, OMB has moved forward on the data center consolidations, looking at the portfolio for duplicative investments, doing 

these tech stat assessments on troubled projects that are high risk. 

But much more needs to be done to be consistently implemented 

across government. There are huge opportunities here to get better 

service at less cost. 


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Mr. DUNCAN. Also, I notice that—I know that all of us favor a 

strong national defense, but your report says that the Department 

of Defense may be underestimating some of the total resources 

dedicated to supporting the headquarters staff. And I’m wondering 

if you could give us a little more specific information on that. 

And then, also, I’ve read over the last several months that even 

many former chiefs of staff and former secretaries—the last, I 

think, three secretaries of defense have said that military personnel costs are spiralling out of control and we’re not going to be 

able to buy some of the necessary weapons and equipment that we 

need if something is not done. What do you have to say in those 

areas? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Definitely military costs are something we 

point out as a big cost driver, along with healthcare costs. Now, 

healthcare costs are on an escalating course just as they are in 

other sectors of the economy. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Right. 

Mr. DODARO. With regard to the headquarters operations, I’ll ask 

Cathy Berrick, who is our expert in defense. But basically, Congressman, they’re only looking at certain aspects of their headquarters operations when we believe they ought to be looking more 

broadly across the department. And as a result, they’re not seeing 

good opportunities, as many opportunities as we believe need to be 

reviewed. And they need to do it on a regular basis. 

Cathy. 

Ms. BERRICK. Sure. There’s really two issues with the growth 

and management headquarters of the Department of Defense. The 

first issue is there has been significant growth and DOD hasn’t 

been doing a periodic reevaluation of resources dedicated to headquarters. So, for example, we recently issued a report looking at 

the three functional combatant commands. There’s about 10,500 civilian and military personnel dedicated to headquarters at these 

three commands. That’s grown over 50 percent in the last 10 years. 

And that is a similar trend that we’ve seen across the geographic 

combatant commands, OSD to joint staff, and other organizations. 

So we think that DOD needs to do a periodic reassessment of resources devoted to those entities. 

The second issue is DOD is pursuing cuts within its management 

headquarters functions at the Department. The Secretary of Defense directed a 20 percent cut. The problem is, as the comptroller 

general mentioned, it’s focused on a very small percentage of the 

headquarters within DOD. So, for example, of the functional combatant commands that I reference, there’s 10,500 personnel—headquarters personnel dedicated. These cuts will only apply to less 

than a quarter of those personnel. So we’ve recommended that 

DOD look more broadly at all of its headquarters personnel versus 

just this small—relatively small portion called management headquarters. 

Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I will say 

this, we need more fiscal conservatives at the Pentagon, I can tell 

you. And I appreciate the job you-all are doing in that regard. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Thank the gentleman. 

Will now recognize the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, for 5 minutes. 


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Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I note that tomorrow is so-called Tax Day, April 15. And that— 

and I’m going to really be interested in next year’s report because 

it looks like the Congress has shot itself in the foot and added to 

the deficit by what it’s done to the IRS. I’ve never seen anything 

like it. 

The reports all over the country are of people waiting in line to 

get audits and other questions answered. As of April 15, you could 

get no information in. Before that, you could get very little information. And if so you had to go to the tax advocate. This is a recipe 

for inefficiency in an agency that we depend upon if we want to reduce our deficit. Now, of course, much of that is going to come out 

in some way, I suspect, Mr. Dodaro, in your—in your report next 

year. But this so-called tax gap is, I believe, already showing it. 

The most recent figures I’ve been able to get about the tax gap, 

that’s the—the difference between what people owe in taxes and 

what they actually report, the figure I get is close to $400 billion 

or $385 billion. Does that sound about right? 

Mr. DODARO. That’s correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Look what that would mean for the deficit if we 

could just get those funds. 

Now, a lot of this is due not just to people avoiding taxes, but 

underreporting. So they need to talk to somebody and, in order to 

talk to somebody, there needs to be an audit. You can’t just say 

‘‘Give us the money.’’ 

By the way, Mr. Dodaro, I read that the IRS is saying up front 

now, in light of what looks like a 17 percent cut, that’s—that’s the 

figure that sticks in my mind. That’s way times more during the 

sequester than any other agency. But the IRS is saying, unless it 

amounts to a million dollars, sorry, we can’t even look at your— 

look at auditing to look to see whether you’re underreporting. In 

other words, home free, they’re saying up front because of this unusual cut that shoots ourselves in the foot, the gut, you name it. 

Now, if one looks at your report today, we find talk of backlogs 

and audits. And here I am looking at the years 2013 and 2014, 

which coincided with these cuts. Isn’t that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. I’d have to—— 

Ms. NORTON. When there’s been backlog—backlog for taxpayers 

needing audits in order for the IRS to collect what is due to the 

people of the United States. 

Mr. DODARO. I’m going to ask Jay McTigue, who heads up our 

IRS work, to respond. 

Mr. MCTIGUE. Yes, Congressman. Over the last several years, 

since about 2010, the audit rate for individuals is down about 25 

percent, and the audit rate for businesses larger than $10 million 

in assets has also declined, in that case, about 30 percent. 

Ms. NORTON. Heavens, are we ever going to be able to collect 

that money? Is there a statute of limitations? I mean, if it’s down 

by that because you don’t have the staff and you obviously don’t— 

they obviously don’t have the staff, is that money gone for the taxpayers? 

Mr. MCTIGUE. Generally, the IRS has 3 years from the time a 

taxpayer files his or her tax return to complete an audit. 


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Ms. NORTON. With these backlogs, I can’t imagine that some people just aren’t off scot free just by virtue of the statute of limitations. I think we have to note that. 

The IRS budget has been reduced by $1.2 billion over 5 years. 

That’s an amount that’s inconceivable. Isn’t that approximately correct? 

Mr. MCTIGUE. Yes, Congressman. 

Ms. NORTON. With that kind of reduction—and you’ve got to decide what you’ve got to do. They’ve already decided they can’t take 

care of you and me because we’re too far down on the totem pole. 

What in the world can they do? 

Mr. DODARO. Well, in that respect, we have made a number of 

recommendations on how our IRS could more efficiently use the resources that they have. For example, to get return on investment 

information, we identified, if they shifted $124 million from field 

exams to correspondence audits, they could increase revenue by a 

billion dollars during that period of time. 

There’s also things that Congress can do to help the IRS. For example, we’ve recommended that paid tax preparers have some certification requirements and that the Congress give IRS the authority to do that. Most of the tax returns are prepared by paid tax preparers. The last time we looked at this, we did undercover operations, only two of the 19 paid tax preparers gave the right answers to the questions we asked. 

Ms. NORTON. So Congress should do what with respect to that? 

Mr. DODARO. Give IRS the authority to regulate paid tax preparers. 

Ms. NORTON. I see. 

Mr. DODARO. And also—— 

Ms. NORTON. The way, by the way, they regulate VITA sites, volunteer—the VITA sites, all of us have it in our jurisdictions where 

volunteers have to be certified tax preparers, those are complete 

volunteers, but they’ve been certified by the IRS. They serve the— 

they save the American people billions upon billions, and they don’t 

have to pay for it. 

Mr. DODARO. And the biggest thing Congress could do is simplify 

the Tax Code. 

Ms. NORTON. You’re right on that, Mr. Dodaro. Thank you. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. I thank the gentlewoman. 

I’ll now recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

Ms. Cobert, I appreciate you being here. One of the things you 

mentioned was the—following up on what Jimmy Duncan from 

Tennessee was talking about, is the underutilized property. It is 

something he has worked on, I have worked on, Mr. Mica has 

worked on. We have literally tens of thousands of buildings that 

are underutilized at this point. 

Freeze the footprint. One of the things, I guess, I would want you 

to consider or, at least, think through, when you talk about acquisitions, one of the things that drives us a bit nuts out West is the 

acquisition budget within the Department of Interior. We have a 

10-plus-billion-dollar backlog with the national parks and monuments and whatnot, I mean, the gems of this country, and yet 

we’ve got tens of—you know, more than a $10 billion backlog but 

at the same time that we’re acquiring more property. 


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Have you given any consideration to stopping or slowing down or 

freezing the footprint in terms of acquisitions within the Department of Interior as well? 

Ms. COBERT. Thank you for your question, Congressman. 

As we think about real estate and the portfolio as a whole, what 

we’ve tried to do is to take a very data driven approach to understand our starting point, where we’re going, and what the needs 

are. What are buildings used for today, and do they still fulfill the 

purpose that they had? What are the new purposes for which real 

estate is needed and important to do that way, so to try and get 

that balance right and to use that data in better decisionmaking 

across. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. And I guess what I don’t see in your consideration—and Mr. Dodaro, I don’t know if you’ve looked at this— 

but the acquisition budget is roughly $500 million to acquire additional properties within the Department of Interior, and yet we still 

have a $10 billion backlog. And what I don’t see is the same Freeze 

the Footprint approach prevailing within the Department of Interior. Am I wrong on that? 

Ms. COBERT. The acquisition of properties for different purposes, 

you have to go back and say what are we acquiring those properties for? I don’t have the specifics the programs on the Department of Interior, but I do know we are trying to think about what 

buildings and what properties we have for which purpose and can 

we use those or reuse those or find a way to get rid of them. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Now, a lot of these aren’t actual buildings. 

A lot of them are lands. Mr. Dodaro. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Mr. Gaffigan is our expert in this area. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Mr. Chairman, the—we have some ongoing work. 

We haven’t been looking at the park service in a long time. There 

are 407 different park units throughout the country ranging from 

Yosemite to small little sites like the Rosie the Riveter historic 

sites. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. You can go ahead and mention Arches, 

which happens to be in Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, one of 

the most beautiful places you can visit. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. I didn’t want to be—I didn’t want to be too obvious. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Go ahead, you have my full permission. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Yeah. There—— 

Ms. COBERT. It’s beautiful. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Yeah and, you know, they’re struggling to deal 

with what they have right now. And this is our first look at it in 

a while. Because the only sources of revenue come from potential 

park fees, concessions. And—and they’re really struggling to deal 

with what they have right now. So we have some ongoing work 

looking at that issue right now. 

Chairman CHAFFETZ. Okay. And, I guess, on behalf of those out 

West, this is of keen concern because the acquisitions continue. I 

think you’ve highlighted the problem. I just worry that—that you 

have not yet also included the Department of Interior, because 

these aren’t—these are typically old buildings and pieces of property and other acquisitions. They all sound great. But then the 

problem is that the Grand Canyon and at Arches and at 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Canyonlands in places all across, we’ve got backlog that doesn’t get 

taken care of. And, right now, that’s to the tune of 10-plus-billiondollars, and you don’t have things like camp sites and waste removal and very basic things that people, as they get out and enjoy 

the outdoors. So—and to the GAO, we would appreciate it if you 

can continue to look at that as well. 

I’ve got a host of other ones, but we’ve got other members here. 

I’m going to go ahead and yield back, but thank you for your consideration on that. 

Will now recognize Ms. Kelly from Illinois, I believe, is next on 

the list. And we’ll recognize her for 5 minutes. 

Ms. KELLY. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Mr. Dodaro, one issue identified in today’s GAO report as an 

area of potential cost savings is the management of information 

technology investments. This is particularly—particularly an important area to invest in, giving our committee’s growing focus on 

cybersecurity and, to me, as the ranking member on the IT subcommittee. Today’s GAO report estimates that, at least, $79 billion 

will be spent on information technology by the Federal Government 

in fiscal year 2015. Is that accurate? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. That is. 

Ms. KELLY. And in your opinion, what opportunities exist for reducing duplication and improving efficiency in this area? 

Mr. DODARO. There are billions of dollars that can be saved in 

that area. I will have—Mr. Powner is our expert in the IT area. 

He can enumerate for you. 

Mr. POWNER. Yeah. Probably the key area is data center consolidation. Right now we have 9—— 

Ms. KELLY. Data center consolidation? 

Mr. POWNER. Data center consolidation. We have 9,700 data centers, of which about 4,000 are planned to be closed. We have accomplished about 1,200 closures to date and about $1.5 billion in 

savings, but there’s still about $6 billion on the table. So when the 

comptroller mentions 60 more billion in savings, you could get $6 

billion right from data centers alone. 

Ms. KELLY. And how many employees does that effect in a negative way, like losing their job? 

Mr. POWNER. Well, actually, there’s a lot of repurposing of jobs. 

The other thing, too, is some of these centers are rather small centers where there’s portions of FTEs that are associated with that, 

so it’s not all jobs going away. 

Ms. KELLY. Okay. 

Mr. POWNER. But, again, we only have 10 percent utilization on 

an average government server. That’s nowhere near the industry 

standard of 60, and we need to do something about that. 

Ms. KELLY. Okay. Thank you. 

Also, OMB in 2012 launched the PortfolioStat initiative. Under 

this program, agencies are required to review their IT investments 

in order to make more efficient decisions. How does the 

PortfolioStat help reduce wasteful spending by Federal agencies 

and has it? 

Mr. POWNER. Yes. So PortfolioStat really tackles duplicative 

what we refer to as commodity IT or business systems. And if you 

look at—there are about 200 initiatives across all the departments 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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and agencies where we could save an additional probably $2 to $3 

billion. The numbers fluctuate at times. 

But in addition to the data center savings of $7.5, there’s roughly $2 to $3 billion in that range. And there’s already been many accomplishments to date that, I think, Beth mentioned in her statement on the savings to date with PortfolioStat. So we’ve gotten out 

of the gate well, but there’s still a lot on the table. And that’s 

where the recent legislation that this committee sponsored is critical to drive this home to closure so that we accomplish all those 

savings. 

Ms. COBERT. If I could add, we worked closely with GAO on these 

issues and the ability to get better data and better control over the 

spending through actions like FITARA, through the work of this 

committee, really gives us a foundation for something to have to 

keep managing very closely going forward. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Yeah. We prefer to call it Issa Connolly up here 

but—— 

Ms. KELLY. This year’s GAO report states, ‘‘While the 26 Federal 

agencies required to participate in PortfolioStat have made 

progress implementing OMB’s initiatives, weaknesses existed in 

agency’s implementation of the initiative.’’ Do you feel like that’s 

correct? 

Mr. POWNER. Yeah. That is true. There’s still room for improvement. In fact, we’re issuing another report on PortfolioStat this 

Thursday, and it’s going to talk about additional steps that need 

to occur. 

One of the things that’s critical here is OMB’s oversight as well 

as congressional oversight with FITARA is critical because agencies, they get out of the gate real aggressively and then, over time, 

you actually—you start to see that the savings that are planned 

aren’t actually accomplished. So, OMB’s oversight and the 

Congress’s oversight with FITARA and the reporting will be essential. 

Ms. KELLY. Well, I want to thank you so much and I sincerely 

hope that we can work together to achieve the nearly $6 billion in 

savings with the proper implementation of the program. So thank 

you so much. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Would my friend yield? 

Ms. KELLY. Yes. Your friend—— 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank my colleague. 

Just real briefly, let me urge upon you, I hope that in—because 

you’ve been enthusiastic supporters of the acquisition reform for IT. 

OMB and GAO I hope can work with us in setting metrics. 

General Dodaro, for example, you mentioned data center consolidation. Well, we actually went, as you may recall in our field hearing, we went in the wrong direction. We didn’t consolidate. We actually discovered thousands of new ones. And so we’ve got to 

make—we’ve got to set metrics for agencies, and they’ve got to 

meet them, and they’ve got to know you’re going to be reporting at 

least annually on that. 

I know my friend, Mr. Meadows, shares my concern, and we’re 

going to use our subcommittee to—to get periodic progress reports. 

But anything you two can do to—in trying that in metrics, I think, 

would be a great help and people will benefit from it. Thank you. 


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Thank you, my friend. 

Mr. MEADOWS. [Presiding.] I thank the gentlelady. The chair recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks everybody for 

doing this. This is actually one of the enjoyable hearings that we 

get to do. If you were here earlier today, you got an example of the 

unenjoyable ones. 

Mr. Dodaro, let’s start with you and some general language. I’m 

curious as to how we can help. I was struck by Mr. Cummings’ 

opening comments saying that Congress is actually sort of lagging 

behind the executive branch when it comes to fixing things. Give 

me a couple of examples for me and my colleagues as to what Congress could be doing to help implement your recommendations. 

What—what have we ignored so far? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Well, there’s—to put things in, perspective 

though, of the amount of money that’s been saved so far, planned 

to be saved, the 100 billion, the 80 and the 20 so far, most of that 

has come through the Congress passing legislation. So, I think, you 

know, for balance purposes, I think Congress has taken some actions that have resulted in probably about 75 or 80 percent of the 

dollar savings has come from the Congress taking action over a 

number of areas. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. DODARO. So, I wanted to put that in perspective. 

There are number of areas in this—in this area. One, I mentioned some in the IRS areas right now. You could also increase the 

requirements for electronic filing that would give IRS more data to 

be able to use, give them increased information sharing areas. We 

have recommendations on how CMS ought to adjust the Medicare 

Advantage payments for Medicare payments, fee for service payments that could result in about, at least, $2 to $3 billion in increased savings. 

I mentioned in my opening statement the—these 11 cancer hospitals that were established in 1982. They have a different payment method. They get reimbursed all their costs, where other hospitals are providing cancer treatment get reimbursed at negotiated 

rates. Put them on a level playing field, you’d save half a billion 

dollars a year right there. 

I mentioned the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The energy is 

going to move in that area. Congress should pay oversight in that 

area. We’ve had recommendations that there are duplicative situations that are unintended where you have somebody receiving a 

disability benefit and an unemployment benefit at the same time. 

Changing that statutorily would save about $1.2 billion. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Do we need to change that statutorily or can 

that be done from an administrative or regulatory position? 

Mr. DODARO. I believe it has to be statutory, but I’ll double-check 

and provide an answer for the record on that. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Got you. 

Mr. DODARO. There’s also—we’re not offsetting—the government 

is not offsetting pensions for State and local governments from Social Security benefits for spousal and survivor benefits. The administration has made proposals in this area to get this corrected for 

the last 4 years, and we think they’re right, and the Congress just 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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needs to pass legislation in this area. This is where, you know, for 

Federal employees, they have the information. They can offset it. 

For State and local governments don’t pay into—some of their pension systems, they don’t pay into Social Security, so they get a separate benefit, and the Federal law says that should be offset in 

that area and over time. 

There’s also an area where, through demonstration projects, 

right now, the administration has the ability to approve tens of billions of dollars in additional Medicaid spending without the Congress having any insight into it, and we believe that that spending 

has not been budget neutral and according to the policies for HHS. 

And we think that that could be, you know, attended to as well to 

deal with these healthcare spendings. 

We’ve also suggested—there’s a component in the DOD health 

system that was established in 1982 and before TRICARE was established in the 1990s. Now, TRICARE offers the same benefits as 

the component within DOD. We think that could be eliminated, 

could save millions of dollars. That has to be done statutorily. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Stick with me on DOD because you’ve mentioned 

this a couple of times in your testimony to the other members. Talk 

to me about weapons procurement. I think everybody in here is interested in a strong national defense, but everybody in here is also 

interested in doing it a little more cost-effective way. You’ve got 

some interesting recommendations, don’t you, on weapons acquisitions program—weapons program acquisitions? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We find that there are many reviews within the system that are duplicative and take years to 

complete and thousands of man hours to be able to handle those 

things. I will ask Paul Francis to explain. 

But we think the weapons systems acquisition process can be 

streamlined from a process standpoint, but they also need to implement best practices to mature technologies before they go into production. Both things have the potential to save tens of billions of 

dollars. 

Mr. FRANCIS. Good afternoon. Yes. So what Mr. Dodaro just said, 

on the efficiencies, we found that, for a major milestone decision it 

takes 2 years for programs to get all the documents lined up for 

that, 5,600 staff days. And we find half of that time is reviewing 

documents, not preparing them. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Is that just for the big programs or is that for 

the smaller ones as well? 

Mr. FRANCIS. The ones we looked at are for the big programs. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Okay. 

Mr. FRANCIS. And I think we did a survey about half—the participants in the process view about half of the documents as having 

high value. The rest not. And about 10 percent of the reviews are 

considered to be high value. So there’s a lot that could be streamlined there. 

Then on the other programs, the issue there is getting a good 

start, having a good business case to start a program. And that’s 

where best practices and other techniques could really take hold. 

We get programs started that are underestimated at the beginning. 

They are too technically ambitious at the start. And it’s years after 


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a program is underway that reality sets in and we report on these 

cost increases. 

So, the easy answer is there’s practices that we could employ to 

get programs started earlier. The real challenge is the acquisition 

culture. So I think a common way of looking at the acquisition 

process is to say it’s broken and needs to be fixed. But I’d ask you 

to look at it a little differently. I think it’s in equilibrium. I think 

all the players kind of get what they want out of it, and the cost 

we pay in terms of additional time and money is just the cost of 

doing business. So, we have to have a process that does a better 

job of saying no when no is to be said. But our process prefers to 

say yes. 

Mr. MULVANEY. I could do this all afternoon, but unfortunately 

I don’t have that time. Thank you. Gentlemen, thank you. 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Lieu. 

Mr. LIEU. Thank you. Let me first thank the panel for your public service. 

And I have questions about the laboratory inspections in the report. And it’s my understanding that both the EPA and the FDA 

conduct laboratory inspections, is that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mr. LIEU. And based on reports analysis, many of the regulations 

are very similar for both these agencies? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Yes. 

Mr. LIEU. And as a result, for example, some laboratories in 

Maryland unknowingly were inspected by both agencies. One in 

Maryland was inspected eight times by the EPA and FDA roughly 

in the same time period. Is that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mr. LIEU. Do these agencies talk to each other before they go do 

these inspections? 

Mr. DODARO. I will ask Mr. Gaffigan to talk about that. They 

used to have a formal agreement, which is expired. And we’re recommending they reinstate the agreement. I think it mostly had to 

do with one of the agencies moving to a quarterly inspection process and from an annual process and they got out of sync. And so 

they haven’t talked to one another in the way that they should. 

And both have had trouble staffing, even though the inspections 

that they do. 

Mark. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Mr. Dodaro is correct. They haven’t coordinated 

since 2007. So our recommendation was they come up with a 

memorandum of agreement to start working better together. 

Mr. LIEU. Are these surprise inspections or do the folks know 

they’re coming? 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. I believe, most of the time, they know they’re 

coming, but I can get you an official answer for the record. 

Mr. LIEU. It could be as simple as just notifying the other agency, right, that you’re about—— 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Yes. 

Mr. DODARO. This is not—— 

Mr. LIEU. It’s not rocket science. 


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Mr. DODARO. Yeah. This is not complicated. 

Mr. LIEU. Okay. All right. 

Mr. DODARO. Now, we do work at NASA. That is rocket science, 

but this isn’t. 

Mr. LIEU. When did that agreement that they used to have expire, do you remember? 

Mr. DODARO. 2007 or 2004. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. I think it’s in that 2004 or 2007 range. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. 

Mr. LIEU. Were these the only two agencies you serve find duplication in terms of laboratories, in terms of inspections? 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. These are the two that will do lab inspections 

looking at the good laboratory practices, which as you mentioned 

are very similar in their criteria. So there are other labs and other 

inspections, but this has the specific purpose to ensure that they 

have good laboratory practices. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. And this can have—if the inspections aren’t 

done properly, it can have implications for industry as well because 

they need to have the certification that they meet these requirements, and so that’s one of the things we point out in the report. 

So this has not only implications for the Federal Government not 

leveraging its resources properly, but for industry as well. 

Mr. LIEU. Do you also look at duplication between other levels 

of government, such as State or county? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. We’re starting to do that now. The statutory 

requirement we have to produce this report is confined to across 

the Federal Government, but I believe there are areas of opportunity in streamlining across Federal, State, and local governments. And we’re starting a pilot program now in the housing area 

to look at that, and I plan to do other areas. 

It’s a complicated analysis because most of the States are different and they don’t have standard procedures, but we have a very 

complicated intergovernmental delivery system in our country that, 

I believe, is pretty expensive, and I’m not sure we can afford to 

maintain it going forward. So I want to move into that area into 

the future. 

Mr. LIEU. I came from the California State Legislature, and I 

had noticed duplication in various areas. So I’m glad you’re moving 

in that direction. I remember looking at weights and measures and 

some supermarkets would get inspected pretty much exactly the 

same thing, by the Federal, State, and city. So I commend you for 

going in that area, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. DODARO. Okay. Actually, I have an advisory group of State 

auditors and local auditors that advise us. Elaine Howle, the State 

auditor from California, is on that group. So they’re working—we’re 

working collaboratively with State and local auditors as well. 

Mr. LIEU. Great. Thank you. 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Congressman, just to clarify your question that 

they had the agreement from 1984 to 2004, although they kept 

meeting until 2007. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Blum. 

Mr. BLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 


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Thank you for being here today. I appreciate your service to the 

government. 

I’m a career small businessman, so I may be one of the few here 

that—that, A, gets into this and, B, I personally think the GAO is 

one of the most important departments in our Federal Government. 

I’m also new here. I’m a freshman congressman, so I get a pass 

when I get to ask these dumb questions. 

First question. There are 24 programs, I believe, on your report 

for duplication of services. If you were a betting man, how many 

do you think are going to be on that report next year that were on 

the report this year? 

Mr. DODARO. Two-thirds. 

Mr. BLUM. Two-thirds. And how about in the 20—— 

Mr. DODARO. Now, I’m not a betting man, just for the record. 

Mr. BLUM. We can strike that from the minutes. 

How about, how many will be on the report that are on the report this year in 2017? 

Mr. DODARO. I’d say about half. 

Mr. BLUM. 2018? 

Mr. DODARO. Still about half. 

Mr. BLUM. Yeah. And this is part of the problem. When I go back 

to my district in Iowa, people say the Federal Government spends 

too much, regulates too much, and wastes too much. 

Being a private sector guy, your department does a fantastic job 

of identifying these problems. What we’re concerned about with is 

the ‘‘A’’ in GAO, which I believe stands for accountability. 

Mr. DODARO. Correct. 

Mr. BLUM. Who is accountable for eliminating this duplication of 

services next year and the year after? Who is accountable for eliminating waste in the Federal Government? 

Mr. DODARO. It’s both the administration and the Congress. 

That’s why we have—keeping separate scores for what actions 

we’ve recommended that the Congress has to take and what actions the administration has to take. And that’s how we define accountability. 

Now, accountability gets fuzzy when multiple agencies are involved in fixing a problem. And really our government structure is 

not well postured to deal with problems that involve multiple agencies. In the executive branch, an OMB would have to take action, 

but they have limited resources and the ability to produce change 

across time. And in the Congress, you have multiple committee jurisdictions. And so it’s difficult to solve problems. 

Forty percent of what we have recommended that involve a single agency have been addressed. Only 25 percent where multiple 

agencies are involved have been addressed. And that’s where I 

think the real weakness is in how we’re organized both in the executive branch and the Congress. 

Mr. BLUM. As a new person here, it seems to me that almost everything in the Federal Government is top down when compared 

to the private sector. Would you agree with that? 

Mr. DODARO. Well, I’m not sure I would say everything is top 

down. I think there’s a lot of things that go on throughout the bureaucracy that the top doesn’t know about, you know, and so I 

think there’s—you know, it’s like parallel universes. I think that 


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there’s, you know, no such thing as a command and control structure except in the military that works effectively. 

Mr. BLUM. Something I have noticed in the first 90 days here is 

it seems to me the incentives in Washington, D.C., the incentives 

in Federal Government, are backwards. 

And I’d like to ask you this: What incentive is there for a rank 

and file Federal employee to eliminate waste? What incentive is 

there for a rank and file Federal employee to eliminate duplications 

of services? In the private sector, there’s incentives. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. 

Mr. BLUM. What incentives are there in the Federal Government 

for that to happen? 

Mr. DODARO. No. 

Mr. BLUM. I’m not seeing them. 

Mr. DODARO. Right. Right. No, no, no, you’re astutely observing. 

One of the more enduring problems in the government is that the 

incentives are more perverse than they are in the proper direction, 

and, you know, there’s more incentive to make sure that you have 

the budget necessary. There’s more incentive to pay quickly and 

then worry about whether you paid the right person later. There’s 

more incentive to build structures. 

Now, they’re all well intended in terms of trying to accomplish 

the mission of their agencies, but there’s really—you know, aside 

from an individual’s sort of view on what their role as the Federal 

Government should be, as being a good public servant, there aren’t 

really built-in systematic incentives to help produce the right outcomes. 

Mr. BLUM. Because it seems to me that the incentive is to spend 

the entire budget or our budget will get cut next year. And do you 

think—do you think there’s a chance we can introduce some best 

practices from the private sector into the Federal Government so 

that it comes from bottom up instead of top down, eliminating duplication, waste, fraud, from the rank and file Federal employees, 

and when someone identifies it that they are actually rewarded for 

that. Is there a chance of that? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Yes. I mean, we’ve looked at a lot of best practices and have tried to get them implemented in agency policies 

and moving things forward, but they run against this tension that 

occurs in the backdrop, and it’s—it’s really exacerbated too by the 

fact that we’re not producing regular budgets on time in the Federal Government. I mean, in the last 50 years I think we’ve only 

had three instances where we’ve passed a budget without some 

form of continuing resolution for the rest of the government. 

So when you’re in an uncertain budget environment, that complicates even if you have a good incentive structure in place. So I 

think we have to get to a regular order and then we can, you know, 

work to build better incentives into the system. 

Mr. BLUM. My time is up, but once again I’d like to commend the 

GAO and yourself on the outstanding work that you do. 

Mr. DODARO. Thank you. 

Mr. BLUM. And I yield back to the chair. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. 

Duckworth. 


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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Inspector Dodaro, I was pleased to see that you included in your 

report the savings the government is already realizing from the 

Army’s choice not to introduce a new family of camouflage uniforms 

into its inventory. Your report notes that this will save taxpayers 

about $4.2 billion over the next 5 years, and in fact I offered the 

amendment in the 2014 NDAA that requires DOD to establish a 

joint camouflage pattern when developing new combat uniforms so 

that the taxpayers won’t have to pay millions to the government 

to keep developing new patterns for every branch of service, that 

also sometimes don’t protect troops in combat such as the Navy’s 

blueberry uniform that they can’t wear on ships because when they 

fall over into the—fall overboard, they are blended with the ocean 

and you can’t actually rescue the sailors. 

Can you give me an update on where DOD’s compliance is with 

this requirement? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Let me ask Ms. Berrick to come and provide 

that. I appreciate your sponsorship of the amendments. It was very 

important. Thank you. 

Ms. BERRICK. Yeah. Thank you for the question. There has been 

significant progress. In fact, we identified that DOD saved over $5 

billion in savings from pursuing a consolidated uniform moving forward. When we started the work and issued last year’s duplication—or the year before’s duplication report, the Army was getting 

ready to move forward with a procurement for their own camouflage uniform, but thanks to the legislation that you helped sponsor 

and which required DOD to pursue this in a more coordinated fashion, they did, in fact, do that and made some progress. 

In addition, DOD issued some joint criteria to ensure that the 

protection of the servicemembers on the battlefield when they’re 

developing uniforms, and that they do that in a coordinated fashion 

as well. So there has been some good progress. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. That’s good to hear. Thank you. 

In reviewing the GAO report, Ms. Cobert—is it Cobert or Cobert? 

Ms. COBERT. Cobert’s correct. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. All right. Thank you. 

Ms. COBERT. Not Colbert. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Not Colbert. I almost went there, but I didn’t. 

Ms. COBERT. Most people do. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. We’ve all been trained by popular cable shows. 

I noted that better management of software licenses is known as 

an area where savings can be achieved. Can you please help me 

understand OMB’s view on how agencies can better manage their 

software licenses? Specifically, I’d like to hear how OMB believes 

agencies should inventory that software, see how much of it is actually deployed to end users, and how much of what’s deployed is 

actually being put to use. If you can’t inventory it, how can you— 

how can you effectively control waste if you can’t inventory it? 

Ms. COBERT. Thank you for raising this issue, and I also want 

to thank our colleagues at GAO for raising this issue in the report. 

It is something that we believe is important to address and working with them and working with agencies, we are moving to tackle 

that. 


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One of the first places starts where you said, which is having an 

accurate inventory of software licences. Software and IT purchasing across the Federal Government has been highly decentralized both among inside of agencies and components within agencies 

as well as across agencies. One of the first steps that we’re taking 

as part of our category management initiative around IT is to develop a much more accurate inventory of licenses that exist and the 

utilization of those licenses today. As the way agencies use software changes, for example, as we are succeeding in moving more 

to the cloud, the ability to have a consolidated view of licenses becomes much easier and the ability to be smarter about how to manage those licenses, how to think about what you’re paying for for 

those licenses, how to make sure that these things are current and 

used and you’re not paying for what you don’t need becomes much 

easier. So we are in the midst of an effort to do that now. 

As I mentioned earlier, the FITARA legislations gives us more 

authority in terms of how we get agencies to consolidate and coordinate their buying. And as we’re putting together the guidance 

for that newly enacted law, this is one of the areas that we’re focusing on. It is a big priority for our Federal CIO, who just joined 

us from industry. So he really brings a lot of the best practices that 

industry is using to this important area. Something we’re going to 

a be a big focus for our work in 2015. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you. Are any of those—is there a practice in Federal Government where a license is automatically renewed and nobody’s reviewing whether or not we’re actually using 

old licenses and they’ve gone on and bought new software packages 

but they’re still—we’re still paying for stuff that’s automatically renewed? 

Ms. COBERT. I don’t have the specifics of that, but in my life in 

the private sector, when I looked at those issues, you would find 

many instance of that. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my colleagues 

would tell me that were the case, at least in some places. 

Mr. POWNER. Yeah. The key here starts with the inventories, 

Congresswoman. Our work has showed that when we looked at 

software licensing, out of the 24 agencies only 2 had a complete inventory. We had 22 agencies that did not have a complete inventory. So—and there’s a big effort afoot, part of OMB’s efforts with 

portfolio, start looking at application, rationalization, what do we 

have on our servers, inventorying all that. So it wouldn’t be surprising if you had many licenses that we don’t even know they’re 

getting renewed. There’s huge opportunities here. There’s pockets 

of success. DHS went through some really nice efforts where they 

saved hundreds of millions of dollars. There’s hundreds of millions 

of dollars on the table if we did this right, but we really don’t know 

what we have right now collectively. 

Ms. DUCKWORTH. Thank you very much. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentlewoman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hice. 

Mr. HICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I, like my other colleagues, thank you both for being here and all that you do. Of 

course you’ve just got a critical responsibility, and we appreciate 

the information that you provide. 


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I think we all know and probably most of us would readily admit 

the obvious appearance is we’ve created a monster around here, 

and you guys are tasked with the responsibility of keeping us 

aware of just how big that monster is and what we can potentially 

do to, to reign it in a little bit. And I wonder in that context with 

all the duplication that you’ve mentioned, are there any areas that 

you would just come out and be able to identify as unnecessary, 

that we’ve got so much duplication, that this area or the other one 

we could just do away with? 

I’ll start with you, Mr. Dodaro. 

Mr. DODARO. There’s not been an area where we’ve said you 

could do away with all activity in a particular area. I mean, most 

of those are policy judgments that would require the Congress to 

say there’s not a need in this particular area for you to do that. 

We have, you know, recommended where you clearly have duplication, and this year’s—our prime example is this institution that 

was created in 1982 within DOD. It was well intended. It was a 

public service function that was turned over to DOD to help serve 

the military and their families, but then TRICARE came along 

about 15 years later, and as typical in the Federal Government, we 

just layer things on. You know, we don’t never go back and take 

anything away, and so now the same people can be served by the 

TRICARE community and you don’t need this separate system. 

And within—when Congress created this, it gave DOD a difficult 

task because they can’t even get the information from the providers 

in this contract to know what their direct costs are and what profit 

margins and administrative costs are. So they’re really disadvantaged of this area. So we’re identifying where you have clear duplication, you can eliminate that duplication, save a lot of money. 

That’s been most of our focus. 

Mr. HICE. Okay. Ms. Cobert, do you have anything to add to 

that? 

Ms. COBERT. I’d like to add to Gene’s comments about the need 

to both think about areas where there are duplication and where 

there are areas where there may be more fragmentation or overlap 

that you’re not able to address immediately through some other 

structure is finding a way to coordinate across agencies. 

One area we did that quite successfully is looking at science, 

technology, engineering, and math education, where we looked at 

the effectiveness of programs, put together a 5-year plan. We’ve reduced the number of programs from 220 to 140 and now have those 

programs much more balanced and effective. It’s a critical area of 

importance for our Nation’s future. And what we tried to do in that 

is get the interagency process to say: Who is doing the best job at 

each one of these things, and then reallocate within that to the 

people who had the best capabilities. Those kinds of processes can 

work. They take a lot of work to make happen. 

Mr. HICE. Sure they do. I’m positive of that. 

Do you find—and that’s a great example, do you find most of the 

time that these agencies follow your recommendations, or is that 

a challenge in itself? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Our experience over a 4-year period of time, 

80 percent of our recommendations get implemented. And what we 

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port are those where they haven’t yet been implemented that require some difficult decisions. They’re among the more difficult 

areas in the Federal Government. But also to your earlier question, 

one of the things that’s really inhibited us from making stronger 

recommendations about whether you need to retain some of these 

functions is the lack of good performance evaluations in the Federal Government. And Beth just mentioned in the science, technology, and engineering area, what we first looked at—there were 

209 programs, 66 percent of them had never been evaluated. So 

you really didn’t know what was working and what was not working, and this is not atypical across Federal Government. 

Mr. HICE. Okay. What about—some of the issues you brought up 

with the DOD, we hinted around this, but the enormous amount 

of property and facilities that they own. And my understanding, 53 

percent of it is all that they can really account for in terms of being 

utilized, and even a lot of that information is inaccurate. This has 

got to be problematic. I’m sure you’ve given recommendations. Are 

they following the recommendations that you’ve provided? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. I’ll ask Ms. Berrick to explain in that area, 

but I was very concerned. They’ve made such incremental progress 

in correcting the data in their database, it was almost imperceptible, but they need to do a lot better job. If you’re going to intelligently manage things, you need better data. 

Mr. HICE. Right. 

Mr. DODARO. Cathy. 

Ms. BERRICK. Yeah. And I’ll start off by saying that GAO’s designated this actually a high-risk area for DOD, that they get a better handle on their property. But just to give you a few statistics, 

DOD has over 500,000 real property entities that’s valued at about 

$850 billion. So the magnitude of this is really enormous. DOD 

manages their real property through a database, as you mentioned. 

Most of the records in that database are blank. And there’s only 

data elements for about 53 percent of those facilities. 

In addition, the data that’s there, there’s lots of inaccuracies. So, 

for example, we found another 7,500 records that showed a zero 

percent utilization record in their database, yet it was shown in active status, which means it’s needed for DOD to meet its mission. 

During the course of our work we actually visited 12 installations 

to see if we could find facilities just visiting those 12 that were underutilized or unutilized. And, by the way, this is important because those facilities could be disposed of to achieve savings or underutilized facilities could be consolidated to achieve savings. At 

just those 12 facilities we identified a number of examples. Four 

buildings specifically that were sitting empty. They weren’t reflected on the property management records. And there was an opportunity with those four to potentially dispose of them or consolidate space. 

So we’ll continue to monitor it. DOD’s made some incremental 

improvements in their data. They recognize it’s a problem, but 

more work remains. 

Mr. DODARO. I think this is an area for congressional direction 

to DOD. That works effectively through the authorization bills to 

get their act together in this area. 


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Mr. HICE. Right. I thank you. My time’s expired, but if you could 

send us some information as to why they have not gotten to this, 

I think that would be helpful. 

Mr. DODARO. Sure. 

Mr. HICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. DODARO. Be happy to. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. And the chair recognizes 

the gentlewoman from Michigan, Ms. Lawrence. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank you for being here today on this liquid sunshine 

day. 

The report issued by GAO details major progress made by the executive agencies and Congress. Based on this year’s report it looks 

like Congress is not doing as well as the executive branch at implementing the GAO recommendations on waste, fraud, and abuse. 

According to the report, GAO made 369 recommendations to the 

executive branch, and 317 of those recommendations have been 

fully implemented. Is that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Okay. The report also stated that 69 recommendations for Congress were made and only 31 of those have 

been fully or partially completed. Is that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. So, your agency is often called the Congressional watchdog by investigating how Federal Government spends 

tax dollars, and you are the ones that are supposed to identify 

those and make sure that we are aware of recommendations— 

make recommendations. Is that correct? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Okay. So, can you—you know, I know we have 

a short period here, but can you sum up—talk to me about the 31 

recommendations made to Congress in its report that deal directly 

with waste or abuse that has not been completely addressed? 

Mr. DODARO. Right. We’ve made recommendations, for example, 

on this eliminating the overlap between the disability benefits and 

unemployment insurance and people receiving those at the same 

time. We’ve made recommendations on crop insurance, for example, 

that there be limits placed on the amount of subsidies for purchasing the premiums on crop subsidies. We believe that could save 

a couple billion dollars, and to—Congress a while ago changed the 

taxes on certain tobaccos for cigars and cigarettes, but the industry 

moved to using less taxed items, you know, like roll your own tobacco instead. So there’s unlevel playing field. We believe if Congress could implement those changes, you’d get about $600 billion 

or a billion more in revenues by level the playing field on tobacco 

taxes. 

We’ve recommended many changes to the IRS to help deal with 

their challenges over there, giving them math authority, et cetera. 

We’ve recommended that there be additional information collected 

for offsetting pension costs for survivors and spouses and Social Security, and in order to equitably treat people the same under the 

rules. That hasn’t been acted as well. So we’ve got a long list. 

Now, in fairness to the Congress, every new Congress our clock 

restarts, is partially completed. So anything the last Congress did 


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to partially complete, which would have been to introduce a bill, 

get it marked up through committee. You can get through a committee mark up we rate it as partial. And so with this new Congress sort of the re-clock set there. Also I would say that most of the major savings to date, the $100 

billion that’s been saved or will be saved, has largely come from 

congressional action. So just—just to put it all in perspective. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. And that’s my point of putting it in perspective. 

So we’re being evaluated on whether we are in compliance. You’ve 

said the clock is reset at every one—and if—it’s only partially addressed if it’s made it to—through committee. 

Have you ever—or not you, but have the GAO ever considered 

revising its methodology for determining whether an action is partially addressed by Congress? Have you—have you all had any discussion on that, considering, you stated, that the clock is resetting 

every Congress, and so it gives the impression that Congress is not 

addressing these issues. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. We have not yet, you know, reevaluated the 

criteria for making these determinations. This is the first time it’s 

come up as an issue. But we’d be happy to take a look at it and 

see if there’s any—a better way to do that, but we try to provide 

in the report a balanced perspective. If you just look at the table 

out of context from the narrative in the report, you can draw the 

wrong conclusion. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Yes. 

Mr. DODARO. But if you read the whole report, I belive you’ll get 

the proper perspective. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Well, I just want to, you know, to the chair and 

to—and thank you all for being here today. So that clearly here in 

Congress as Representatives of the people, and stewards of the taxpayer’s dollars, we should be doing at least as good as the executive 

branch if not better. I would—I would respectfully ask that we look 

at this methodology because we will continuously as the clock 

resets, appear to the taxpayers that we are not giving serious actions and considerations to your report. 

Thank you. And I yield back my time. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. We will do that, but I’ve been informed by 

my team that only two issues have been reset among the recommendations that we have, but we’ll take a look at it. 

Mrs. LAWRENCE. Thank you. 

Mr. PALMER. If the gentlelady would yield, I’d just like to point 

out that the GAO recommendations from last year are in this 

year’s budget that was passed by the House. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. The chair recognizes the gentleman 

from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Yeah. Thanks for being here, and you certainly 

presented a—many, many ways for the government to save money, 

and we hope they all survive the appropriations process. There are 

two I want to focus on in particular. 

One is you talk about abuse of children’s SSI benefits, and I 

know recently that the number of people—children who are being 

described as disabled has gone through the roof, and of course 

there’s certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence of severe abuses here. 

I wonder if you could elaborate on that a little bit. 


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Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Basically I’ll ask Ms. Bovbjerg, who’s our expert in the area, to elaborate a bit. But the basic issue, Congressman, is that they’re supposed to have continuing reviews to see if 

the situation has improved so that the children or even adults in 

that matter can overcome their disability, but Barb. 

Ms. BOVBJERG. Yeah. Continuing disability reviews are medical 

reviews to see if they’re still qualified for disability benefits. And 

the Social Security Administration has really not been doing many 

for children. And they have told us that the reason for this is that 

they—they’re husbanding their resources and they’ve chosen to 

focus on the adults. But the fact of the matter is they really have 

not done the level of continuing disability review for any age that 

they should be doing. This is something that every dollar spent 

saves $9 in Federal funds. And in this case we were talking about 

children in Supplemental Security Income, which is a general fund 

program. But if you think about it also for disability insurance, 

which is a trust fund funded program, this is a program integrity 

issue in programs that are going to run out of money. So it’s really 

important that they take this very seriously because otherwise they 

will be paying disability benefits for years to people who have 

medically improved to the extent that they don’t—they don’t any 

longer meet the eligibility requirements. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Or maybe they weren’t disabled in the first place 

and they slipped between the cracks. Is that possible? 

Ms. BOVBJERG. It’s always possible, but I like to think that that 

doesn’t happen a lot. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Do you know right off the top of your 

head the increase in the number of people on SSI, children on SSI? 

Ms. BOVBJERG. I don’t, but it has gone up. Disability in all categories has gone up. 

Mr. DODARO. We’ll provide the specific numbers for the record. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Could you elaborate a little bit more on 

some of your suggestions for the SNAP program? 

Ms. BOVBJERG. Well, the one in this year’s report is really about 

how they—how States who are responsible for managing waste, 

fraud, and abuse in the food stamp program, are trying to discern 

who is essentially selling their cards. And the guidance given by 

the Food and Nutrition Service suggests that whenever somebody 

has gotten four replacement cards you better look at that individual. And in our work, we took to heart that the State said can’t 

look at all those people and it’s not—it’s not—we’re not getting 

anything from this. We’re essentially getting people who have an 

unstable living environment. You know, they might be homeless 

and they’re losing their cards. They weren’t finding people selling 

their cards. And we found a way that they could use the same data 

and they could just better target their approach, that we felt that 

if they looked for someone who asked for four replacement cards in 

four different benefit periods, that reduced the number of people 

they were looking at, at least in the three States that we examined, 

by almost half, and then they could focus much more greatly on 

these people who are much more likely to have been selling their 

cards. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. We find that there’s a greater need to use 

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forts to find fraud, waste, and abuse. And there really, in some 

cases, aren’t that great of incentives for doing it. This is a case 

where the Federal Government pays all the cost, the States are administering the program, and so there’s, you know, not that great 

of incentive for them to do this. So we’re trying to urge them to 

take—use more techniques then to try to urge the Federal agency 

to provide support to the States and urge them to look better at 

this area. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. There were people who didn’t believe there was 

a lot of evidence that people were selling cards? 

Ms. BOVBJERG. The ones that they looked at—the ones that they 

looked at just on the basis of the four card rule, it wasn’t panning 

out for them at the level that you would expect and you would 

want. And, we felt that the States should spend their resources— 

their limited resources on the people who are more likely selling 

the cards. Certainly you want to look at everybody, but if you don’t 

have the resources you definitely want to target. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Thank you for calling on me. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Russell. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you each for 

being here and for the work that you do. 

The Social Security department shows six and a half million active accounts to Americans that are at least 112 years old or older. 

Have you run into any of this in your own accounting for the problems that we have on—I mean, we talk a lot about the disability, 

and we know the trouble that it is in, but six and a half million 

active accounts of Americans that are 112 years old or older? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Go ahead, Barb. 

Ms. BOVBJERG. We have done work on the Social Security 

records. We’ve been very interested in their death records. And 

why you would have people who were 112 and older who were not 

in the death records is troubling. And I think the Social Security’s 

response to this has been the people that were identified, in particular by their inspector general most recently, are not active 

beneficiaries. So, we don’t really need to verify that because it’s not 

part of our program. 

But the death records are a very important aspect of program integrity across the Federal Government. They’re shared with other 

agencies to make sure that we’re not sending checks to dead people, and it would be very important to keep that information upto-date. So, yeah, we’re very concerned about that. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Do you think with six and a half million of them 

that are still listed as active accounts that maybe some of those 

might be abused? 

Ms. BOVBJERG. Absolutely. And some of them are. 

Mr. RUSSELL. And with the things that have been pointed out 

with TRICARE and Veterans Administration, as a military retiree, 

I’m on TRICARE for life, which really means TRICARE to 65 and 

then it rolls over to something else. We went through a gyration 

in the military even when I was on active duty when they revamped to go to TRICARE, and we see a reduction in base hospital 

and healthcare facilities that could not accommodate, and then 

they would move you to the local community and you would receive 


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your care there, which is much what I do now. Even as a Member 

of Congress I have those exemptions under a different title of law. 

I pay a copay, I go out and I—as a veteran of several wars, I have 

my medical desires met. 

Do you feel that a construct like that would be adequate to even 

replace the VA? 

Mr. DODARO. You know, I don’t know if we’ve—— 

Ms. BASCETTA. We haven’t done work specifically on that question, but we do know that for many years before the recent concerns about waiting times at the—at the VA, there were—there 

were limitations in their ability to take care of all of the veterans. 

So they’ve always had a capacity to send veterans out on the market for what they then call fee basis care. That was greatly expanded through the Choice program. We have very significant concerns not only in the civilian sector, but actually in—for all of us 

about coordination of care in those situations. It’s one thing to have 

the most cost effective care available. That’s critically important, 

but the quality of that care and the coordination to ensure that the 

care is actually value based is where we are really trying to drive 

care for everybody in—— 

Mr. RUSSELL. I would suggest that the lack of overhead, the lack 

of payment of salaries, the lack of all of the other things, just paying for the care outright might be a way to solve a lot of the VA 

issues that we’re dealing with and we have other medical systems 

that are proving that to be at a rate lower than Medicare which 

was the basis of some of your reports. The Department of Defense, it spent $14.4 million in storage of 

items that have not been requested in over 5 years. For example, 

a $391 power mast that hasn’t been asked for and has cost $8,000 

to store in over 5 years, and this while we had active theaters of 

war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. How do we address the things 

that—I understand giant gears and things that we might need in 

some national global emergency, but that’s not what we’re talking 

about here. What—what is being done to address this massive storage problem of things that aren’t even asked for in over 5 years? 

Ms. BERRICK. Sure. This is—actually is another GAO high risk 

area, supply chain management, of which inventory is one of three 

elements of it. There’s actually a good news story here in that DOD 

has paid considerable attention to making sure that they only have 

the inventory on hand that they need. They set aggressive inventory reduction goals over the past years and largely have achieved 

them. There’s only one remaining area that we’re really focused on, 

is that they maintain the progress that they’ve made to date, and 

that they put in a framework to ensure that this continues as leadership changes within the military, that they keep this emphasis 

in focus. So we think this is actually a good news story, but that 

DOD needs to continue the progress that it’s made in this area. 

Mr. RUSSELL. Thank you. And thank you for your answers. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. The chair recognizes the 

gentlewoman from New York, Ms. Maloney. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome 

to all the witnesses. Good to see you again, Mr. Dodaro, and I’d like 

to ask you about the Data Act which was passed in a bipartisan 


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way by this committee, and it helps reduce duplication by making 

spending data comparable across all programs. This also allows the 

executive branch to better measure the cost to the Federal Government for these investments. When you testified last year before 

this committee, you said that passing the Data Act, ‘‘One of the 

biggest single things that could be done in order to provide more 

transparency on the cost of these programs and activities.’’ Do you 

remember saying that? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Can you explain why you believe this? Why you 

believe this so strongly, it’s an important—important statement 

you made? 

Mr. DODARO. Well, one of the areas that we have had the most 

difficulty in looking at the overlap and duplication in the Federal 

Government is lack of good information about what’s being spent 

for all these programs and activities. And the other area that we’ve 

identified as a problem is that there’s not a lot of good performance—measurement of performance evaluation information. 

So if you don’t know what you’re spending on a program and if 

you don’t know whether the program’s effective or not, you’re really 

handicapped at making good intelligent decisions. And for us to be 

able to advise the Congress on that area and the American public, 

who fund the government and have responsibility for eventually 

servicing all the debt that we’re accumulating, basically have no 

visibility and to the government’s activities on information that 

they can see what the results are of all the Federal Government’s 

activities. So if you don’t have an informed set of decisionmakers 

and elected officials that have access to this data and the public is 

not in a good position to have good confidence in government because they can’t see what’s being done, then I think you have problems. And that’s why I said what I did and I—I meant it. 

Mrs. MALONEY. And then the President signed it into law in the 

last session. And how are we coming about in implementing it? It 

certainly makes good sense. If you don’t have good data you can’t 

make good decisions, and certainly we need to understand and 

make comparisons, but it just got passed I guess a year ago. So, 

when will it be completely implemented in Congress—— 

Mr. DODARO. Well, it had a phased implementation in the legislation. By May, next month, OMB and Treasury are to issue the 

data standards, and I’m sure Beth can speak to what OMB and 

Treasury are doing to implement this. Then there’s a 2-year period 

to allow the agencies to prepare to implement the data standards 

properly, and then GAO and the IGs have the audit responsibilities 

down the road. But I’m—I’m going to issue a report to Congress 

this year. Under the statue, the first report that was asked for was 

2017, but I want to give the Congress a good up-to-date report on 

how its early implementation is going. So, you’ll get a report from 

us later this year. I think they’re off to a good start, but there’s 

a lot that needs to be done. 

Mrs. MALONEY. When do you expect it to be up and running so 

you can make these good decisions? Is it 2 years or—— 

Mr. DODARO. Well—yeah, under the law, the—the—2017 would 

be the first year that it would be implemented. 


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Mrs. MALONEY. Okay. And what are the—have you compiled the 

data standards yet, Ms. Cobert? Are you compiling them? 

Ms. COBERT. We are working on the data standards that are due 

in May. There’s been an active process of consultation with many 

different stakeholders inside the executive branch, with Congress, 

external stakeholders, to get those data standards defined in a way 

that makes sense. And we have been actively working on that to 

meet the May deadlines. As Gene said, this is a big focus of our 

office. We do believe that the Data Act creates real potential to provide better information to decision makers inside all parts of government, and are taking our responsibility to execute against the 

recommendations and the Congressional mandate that’s been given 

to us very, very seriously. 

Mrs. MALONEY.And have there been any—any unexpected problems that have come up from OMB or Treasury that you’ve had to 

address? 

Ms. COBERT. It is a complicated process to take financial systems 

that were in some ways designed for a different purpose and turn 

them into being used this way. So there is a lot of hard detailed 

work. We’ve requested funding in the fiscal year 2016 budget to 

help ensure we can meet the implementation timeline. So we’ve 

been working our way through this, and we will continue to be 

working our way through this according to the time table that Congress has set out. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Well, my time is expired, but I would be very interested in seeing what your data components are, and I’d like to 

see if you could give them to the chairman and maybe he could 

share them with me. Because I really would be interested in seeing 

them. Congratulations. I think it’s a really important project and 

one we should already have up and running. Thank you. 

Mr. DODARO. I think it would be very helpful to have congressional input into the standards to make sure that they’re going to 

produce the type of data that you would like to see. So I think 

that’s an excellent idea. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentlewoman. 

Let me—one follow up question, Ms. Cobert. So it doesn’t sound 

like you’re going to meet the May 9 or you are going to meet it. 

So if you’re not going to meet it, when could we expect it since a 

lot of this—you know, you’ve got to get yours in before the rest. So 

just as a follow-up. 

Ms. COBERT. We’ve been working for the May deadline. That is 

the path that we’re on right now. So, you know, that’s—that’s—— 

Mr. MEADOWS. So if we miss it, we’re going to miss it by days 

and weeks not months or years? 

Ms. COBERT. Yeah. Oh, no. No. Yeah. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Thank you. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Palmer. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really love the work 

you guys are doing. This is—having run a think tank for 20-something years, it’s right in my sweet spot. So I commend you for the 

work you’re doing and hope you’ll keep it up. Just have a couple 

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serve and the potential for generating revenues by getting that 

down to a 90-day reserve. I think we’re in excess of that right now. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Yeah, that’s—that’s correct. The international 

standard is a 90-day supply considering both government and the 

private sector having total resources. Right now the Federal Government has a 106-day supply. The latest estimate on the private 

sector is 141-day supply. We think that it’s time to reexamine this. 

Mostly because of the increase in production. You know, we’ve had 

a lot of technology improvements. Last year’s 2013 and 2014 were 

some of the most record years of oil production in the United States 

history, and so we’re on track by international standards to be the 

largest producer in the world. So we think it’s a good time to reevaluate this. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is aging. The infrastructure is aging. We think you could not only sell some of the oil 

potentially, depending on the reassessment, to get billions of dollars, you could reduce administrative costs. And then also maybe 

you could minimize the cost of replacing the infrastructure eventually. 

Mr. PALMER. On the private sector that’s holding 141 days, do 

you know if that includes what’s sitting in tanker cars because 

they’ve got nowhere to go with it right now? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. Mark? 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. I’d be surprised if it includes that. It’s very hard 

to measure these things after it reply—and rely on the industry, 

self-reporting, but I do know that the numbers Mr. Dodaro was 

quoting was based on the work we did in December of 2014, the 

140-plus days, that’s increased, and we think it’s over 200 days at 

this point and—— 

Mr. PALMER. That’s the good news. The bad news is is that I 

think at that time the price was about $65 a barrel and we’re down 

to $52 something or—— 

Mr. GAFFIGAN. Right. We looked at it this morning, and $56 is 

what it is based on. But still if you look at—and it’s—the other 

part of this is it’s based on the net imports. So when we did the 

analysis in 2014, it was based on net imports for 2013. Looking at 

net imports for 2014, the number of days has increased as well. So, 

while the price has dropped some, the number of days beyond the 

90 has increased substantially. 

Mr. PALMER. I’m also looking at the reserves that the Federal 

Government owns in places like the Green River Formation. I 

think there’s some interest in expanding our research into the 

outer continental shelf and the potential for generating revenue to 

meet our revenue needs, everything from infrastructure to defense 

to running the government, are enormous. 

Let me ask you—let me switch horses on you here for a moment 

and go back to the IRS, and I don’t know if the GAO has any ideas 

on this, and that is the fact that I think we only collect about 84 

percent of the taxes that are owed us. I think we wind up collecting 

some additional amounts, but on a year-to-year basis. And that has 

to do, I think, with the difficulty of pursuing these cases, the cost. 

Does the GAO—have you looked into this and do you have any recommendations for what the IRS could do to facilitate this so that 

we actually collect the money that’s owed us? 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. DODARO. Yes. We’ve been very concerned about the tax gap 

between taxes owed and taxes collected. Right now the latest estimate of IRS is that an $385 billion gap between taxes owed and 

taxes collected under the current structure. We have a long list of 

recommendations of things that the IRS could do in order to enhance collection activities revolved around a couple of themes. One 

is getting better return on investment numbers of exactly what— 

tying their initiatives to specific revenue collection activities. They 

don’t have a lot of good data. We illustrated what could be done 

by shifting, if they shifted based on looking at return on investment, $124 million from field audits, exams, to correspondence audits, they could collect an additional billion dollars. So that—that’s 

it. 

We have recommendations to the Congress, two of things Congress could do, to increase the collection figures. For example, to 

allow IRS to set standards for paid tax preparers. Most of the tax 

returns are—people use paid tax preparers. We found that in a lot 

of cases, when we did undercover operations, sent people into 19 

paid tax preparers, only two of them gave us the right answers to 

the questions. So we think this could be something that Oregon has 

done, some of the States have done, that could be implemented at 

a broader level. Simplifying the tax code would help greatly in this 

regard. So we have a lot of recommendations that both IRS and the 

Congress could implement to address this issue. 

Mr. PALMER. Thank you for your work. 

I yield the balance of my time. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 

Walker. 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Dodaro, 

appreciate your time, and all the witnesses there. Only two have 

nodded off in the last 30—no. I’m just teasing you. We wouldn’t 

blame you at certain times, but I am—I’ve got a couple questions 

here but I want to get more in depth in the process a little bit. 

Sometimes we get a little bit more subjective than objective, and 

even heard the gentlelady from Michigan talking about if we could 

only replicate more the way the executive branch operates. 

And I want to talk a little bit about the process. Obviously, you 

have a very distinguished career, winning many awards, and except the 2013 Braden Award, most of those awards came before you 

took over the GAO office, and I don’t know if that means you did 

a great job or exactly what. But my question is, my first question 

is, when you’re implementing or taking action steps, can you talk 

about the process when you see there’s an issue, there’s a concern, 

I’d like to take it from a 30,000-foot perspective, but then hone in 

on a couple Medicare questions in just a minute. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah, sure. Well, we produce reports, have recommendations in the reports. Agencies will let us know whether 

they agree with the recommendations or not. In our reports, in addition to making recommendations to executive branch agencies, 

we also make recommendations to the Congress. Matters for the 

congressional consideration. We have a regular follow-up process on 

those recommendations. Over a 4-year period, 80 percent are implemented. On average last year implementation of our recVerDate Sep 11 2014 12:33 Oct 29, 2015 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\95420.TXT APRIL

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ommendations resulted in $54 billion in financial benefits to the 

Federal Government. So about $100 back for every dollar invested 

in GAO. About 1,200 non-financial benefits, improvements in public safety and other things that are in place. 

Now, after a while, if our recommendations aren’t implemented, 

I’ll either go to an agency head and say—in fact, we’re getting 

ready to send letters to all of the major executive branch agency 

heads with—highlighting key recommendations that are not yet 

implemented. We’ll go to the Congress and try to get the Congress 

to implement the recommendations in the appropriations process or 

authorization bills. So a lot of our recommendations get implemented that way through the Congress. 

Mr. WALKER. That helps me tremendously. Are most of those 

self-initiated observations, or do you get those from Congress? How 

would you come about putting on these smorgasbord of things need 

to be done? 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah, yeah, we do a strategic plan for serving the 

Congress and the country looking ahead on a 5-year period of what 

work we think makes sense in consultation with the Congress, outside experts across government. We receive requests from committee chairs and ranking members and have requirements to do 

studies in law or in conference or committee reports. Last year we 

had about 900 requests from the Congress. I’d say about 75 percent 

of those were things that we thought were good ideas for us to 

work on. So it was a collaborative process between GAO and the 

Congress. 

Mr. WALKER. Thank you for addressing that. If there’s—if you’ve 

already—I apologize for the redundancy. Specific question I want 

to talk to you about. Thirty two years ago Congress required the 

establishment of criteria I believe it was 11 cancer hospitals. 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mr. WALKER. My question was, I think it was—they were exempted from a predetermined Medicare payment. 

Mr. DODARO. That’s correct. 

Mr. WALKER. How does care at these exempted cancer hospitals 

compare to other hospitals providing similar services? Can you address that? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. I’ll ask Ms. Cindy Bascetta who’s our—head of 

our healthcare service to address that issue. 

Ms. BASCETTA. We were concerned about the issue because when 

the prospective payment system was put in place many years ago, 

the cancer hospitals were designated as exempt because at the time 

the belief was that the payment system wouldn’t adequately reflect 

their costs. It hasn’t been revisited since then, and we believe now, 

based on an analysis that we did that compared the populations 

that were cared for in regular teaching hospitals that are paid 

under the prospective system and the PCH hospitals, that in fact 

there aren’t differences in outcomes and that the care is comparable. So we believe based on that analysis that the savings to 

the—up to about $500 million. 

Mr. WALKER. Okay you just took my second question. Are you 

say—are you feel good about estimating a number there—— 

Ms. BASCETTA. Yes. 

Mr. WALKER. —that we could save? 


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Ms. BASCETTA. Absolutely. 

Mr. WALKER. And you said around? 

Ms. BASCETTA. It’s $156 million on the inpatient side and about $303 million on the outpatient side. 

Mr. DODARO. It’s about $500 million a year could be saved. 

Mr. WALKER. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Walberg. 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the 

panel for being here. 

And Mr. Dodaro, I wish you could have talked about comprehensive tax reform a little longer. And as I sit here and listen, I am 

constantly brought back to the fact that maybe just per chance 

we’ve let the Federal Government get too large, but I appreciate 

the work you’re doing in looking into what’s going on. 

Relative to FOIA review process, DHS has the largest backlog of 

any Federal agency. How does the duplicative processing like with 

USCIS and ICE where USCIS process certain requests, and then 

sends requests to ICE which processes them a second time? They 

had a different working relationship earlier on. How does that duplicative processing of requests contribute to the backlog? 

Mr. DODARO. It’s a great contributor. I’ll ask Mr. Powner to explain how—why that happens, but we think it can be streamlined. 

Mr. POWNER. So they have one of the largest backlogs of FOIA 

requests. So if you start with that, you want to streamline operations. So if you look at what USCIS does at CBP, they have an 

agreement where they don’t duplicate efforts. And what we looked 

at we saw a situation where ICE and USCIS they were duplicating. 

So our recommendation was really to follow that memorandum of 

agreement that USCIS and CBP has in place, and that would actually help the backlog. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. So you have three different components of 

the Department of Health—or Homeland Security. Two of the components have an agreement. They don’t duplicate. The third component doesn’t have the agreement with ICE. So you have inconsistencies even within the department. 

Mr. WALBERG. Why weren’t they able to come to an agreement 

like they had in the past? What kept them from that? 

Mr. POWNER. I think a lot of it’s just a history of how they’ve 

done it in the past and culture and bureaucracy on how they process that information. It’s their information so they want to process 

it instead of letting another organization do it. That’s what CBP 

does with USCIS is they say it’s okay for the USCIS to process the 

FOIA requests using our data, where ICE doesn’t have that level 

of comfort. 

Mr. WALBERG. Do we see any movement that direction? 

Mr. POWNER. Not to date. Not to date. That was a recent report 

that we issued, but we’re continuing to—— 

Mr. DODARO. One of the things I have mentioned I’m sending letters to the agency heads. This is one area I want to point out. And 

I have frequent conversations, particularly with the deputy for the 

Department of Homeland Security. So I’m going to mention it to 

them too. See if we can get some movement. 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. WALBERG. Okay. Ms. Cobert, in GAO’s 2011 report found 

that tracking undisbursed balances and expired grant accounts 

could facilitate the reallocation of scarce resources or returning 

funding to the Treasury. Per GAO’s recommendation, OMB has instructed executive departments and agencies to take action to address undisbursed balances and expired grant accounts. 

GAO’s 2011 report highlighted issues related to undisbursed balances and expired grant accounts. OMB implemented GAO’s recommendation and the action is considered fully addressed. What 

made this instance different from the other cases that OMB has 

not yet addressed? 

Ms. COBERT. Thank you for describing that particular instance. 

It’s an example of the many places where we work closely with 

GAO on trying to take what they learn from their work and work 

together both within OMB and across agencies to put things into 

action. 

The recommendations there were very clear, and we were able to 

pursue that through our normal oversight of grants, which is done 

through the Office of Federal Financial Management. Actually a 

part of my responsibilities at OMB. 

We are also on a number of other areas working to implement 

the GAO reports, whether it’s on elements around strategic 

sourcing, portfolios that we discussed earlier, a data center consolidation. In our mind, the input we get from GAO is extremely valuable in helping us set our agenda for working together with agencies. And, in fact, in particular, for example, on things like the 

high-risk list. Gene and I have meetings together with the relevant 

agencies. We sort of work our way through the high-risk list on a 

monthly basis. Because we think it’s important to take these things 

seriously. 

Mr. WALBERG. So there is follow-up between—— 

Ms. COBERT. Absolutely. 

Mr. WALBERG. Are agencies responding? 

Ms. COBERT. Agencies are responding. You can see that in the 

number of reports, of the number of action items that have been 

addressed fully or partially. Some of those are through OMB actions. Some of those are through agency actions, and where they 

haven’t been addressed, we’re continuing to try and understand 

what’s getting in the way. Sometimes they have—they may have 

the same diagnosis of a problem as GAO, a slightly different view 

on what the right solution is, and that’s where we enter into an 

active dialogue to say what’s the best way to try and get at the root 

problem we’re trying to solve. 

Mr. WALBERG. Well, I wish you success, and—— 

Ms. COBERT. Thank you. 

Mr. WALBERG. —I yield back. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Carter. 

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you for 

being here. This is very important and very informative, and we 

appreciate it very much. 

Mr. Dodaro, I want to speak—I know that the previous Congressman questioned you about DHS, but I’d like to go further into that, 

and it’s important to me for two reasons. First of all, I’m a member 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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of the Homeland Security Committee. So it’s important for that 

reason, but, secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I have a bill, 

one of my first bills that I’ve introduced, House Resolution 1615, 

that deals with this. As you know, the Department of Homeland 

Security has more FOIA requests than any other department, and 

not only that, but right now the backlog of all Federal FOIA requests, the Department of Homeland Security has more than half, 

which is really alarming. Now, again, I want to ask you because 

my legislation really calls for the elimination of duplication, and I 

want to ask you again about USCIS and then ICE and the duplication there. Is there indeed duplication in that process? Are they 

both—are they both processing the FOIA requests—— 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mr. CARTER.—separately? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. 

Mr. CARTER. So your office acknowledges and believes that they 

are indeed doing that? 

Ms. DODARO. Yes. Yes. And that’s our recommendation is to 

eliminate that duplication. 

Mr. CARTER. Okay. Well, let me ask you. It’s my understanding 

that—that Customs and Border Protection and USCIS have an 

agreement in which they—they work together on these FOIA requests, yet—yet ICE does not have that same agreement? 

Mr. POWNER. Correct. And our recommendation is to replicate 

that agreement that those two organizations have—— 

Mr. CARTER. Did they give a reason why they don’t have that 

agreement? Is there—— 

Mr. POWNER. No. There was some back and forth about was it 

actually duplicative or not and some hand wringing there, but the 

issue here is they both process some of the same FOIA requests. 

There is duplication, there’s an opportunity to reduce it by having 

that agreement. This is a pretty straightforward issue. This is really a simple one. 

Mr. CARTER. Okay. It’s my understanding that at one point they 

did have an agreement—— 

Mr. POWNER. They did at one time. 

Mr. CARTER. —and it expired. 

Mr. POWNER. It expired, yes, and they have not revisited that. 

So this is very straightforward. 

Mr. CARTER. I’m—— 

Mr. DODARO. It’s hard to explain. It’s some type of behavior that 

happens at times within large bureaucracies, and I don’t profess to 

give you a really good answer as to exactly why—— 

Mr. MEADOWS. Can you turn your mic on? 

Mr. DODARO. I’m sorry. Excuse me. 

What I was saying is, you know, it’s sometimes hard to explain 

behavior in large bureaucracies, and I don’t profess to try to explain exactly why it is what it is. All we know is that it’s not correct the way it is. It’s contributing to the backlog and needs to be 

changed. 

Mr. DODARO. So if your bill can help in that regard, I think it 

would be a terrific idea. 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
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Mr. CARTER. Well, certainly we want to push this issue because 

it would appear to me that not only would it help with the backlog, 

obviously, but it would be less expensive to do it that way. 

Mr. DODARO. That’s correct. 

Mr. CARTER. You know, since I’ve been up here all of three and 

a half months, common sense, I’m not sure that—— 

Mr. DODARO. Sometimes it’s—— 

Mr. CARTER. —I have figured out where it’s hiding at. 

Mr. DODARO. Sometimes it’s not so common. 

Mr. CARTER. Well, you’re exactly right. 

But, again, it’s my understanding that—that these two subgroups, if you will, suborganizations, of Homeland Security have 

established a study committee of sorts to work through this. 

Are you aware of that? Are they working on it? What’s the status 

of it currently? 

Mr. POWNER. I’m not—I’ll have to get you a status for the record. 

I’m not aware of the working group, so we’ll get back to you on 

that. 

Mr. CARTER. Okay. Well, if you could, that would be very important because—— 

Mr. POWNER. Sure. 

Mr. CARTER. —obviously this is a bill that’s very important to me 

and, I think, should be very important to all of us to get rid of this 

backlog. Again, over half of the Federal FOIA requests that are in 

backlog now are in Homeland Security. No excuse for that whatsoever and no excuse for the duplication. So thank you for your efforts and, please, watch this bill very, very closely. 

Mr. DODARO. We will. 

Mr. CARTER. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield the remainder of my time. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica. 

Mr. MICA. Thank you, Chairman Meadows. 

And, Mr. Dodaro, welcome. Ms. Cobert. 

One of the things we’ve worked on, in fact, worked closely with 

Mr. Meadows, is my interest in fulfilling the findings we did in the 

reports some years ago. The title of it was the Federal Government 

Must Stop Sitting On Its Assets. And we looked at properties as 

one part of it and we’ve actually taken that on. I think you’ve endured a few of our hearings. We had some pretty good successes 

when you drive down Pennsylvania Avenue and you see the old 

post office building that was costing us $6 to $8 million a year. It 

will soon be a five star hotel and a first class commercial center, 

probably employing a thousand people and paying us—I think the 

deal we cut was about a quarter of a million a month, plus a percentage of the gross. Not too bad. And other properties. But unfortunately the successes are fairly limited. 

DOD, for example, under the information I’ve gotten from staff 

and, I think, from you all, says that DOD has 560,000 facilities 

worldwide and, as of September, only had a utilization rate of 53 

percent. Is that correct? 

Who is going to—— 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. 

Mr. MICA. Identify yourself. 


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Ms. BERRICK. Okay. Just to clarify that. There was only data in 

DOD’s real property database for 53 percent of the facilities. So basically—— 

Mr. MICA. Well, that’s all you could confirm. 

Ms. BERRICK. Right. And the—— 

Mr. MICA. Yeah. Because we found in the past—and I think some 

of your work, too—it was, one, agencies didn’t know what they had. 

They didn’t know the conditions. Sometimes they didn’t—their inventory was—was never updated and then whether it was utilized 

was a totally different question. 

Mr. DODARO. Yeah. That’s correct, Congressman. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. How—— 

Mr. DODARO. And I found that—yeah. 

Mr. MICA. But the other thing, too, is I think the GAO has recommended that OMB develop a national strategy that could provide a pathway to manage excess and utilize—access underutilized 

properties. You recommended this? 

Mr. DODARO. Yes. Yes. 

Mr. MICA. And how are they doing on it? They’ve got it all done? 

They’ve got a good plan? 

Mr. DODARO. Well, they’ve just produced a strategy document a 

couple of weeks ago that toward the end of—— 

Mr. MICA. A couple weeks ago? 

Mr. DODARO. Right, right. And we looked at that. We think it’s 

a first good step. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. You recommended that, as I recall, back in 

June of 2012. So that’s probably lightning rocket speed to get it 

last week, so—— 

All right. OMB. I’ve got a—and DOD. I’ve got a specific case in 

Florida. About a year or so ago, I dragged one of the subcommittees 

down. We have—you know, when you have public assets and we’re 

sitting on them, you’ve got to look in your own backyard. And at 

Cape Kennedy, I have 144,000 acres that NASA has. They’ve been 

out of some of that business for 5 years now. On that 500 buildings, half of them are vacant or underutilized. 144,000 acres, that’s 

six times the size of Manhattan. 

Then next to it is the Air Force property which is 16,000 acres. 

I’m not talking about Patrick. I’m talking next to it. So I held a 

hearing, and we had—people laid out, the port director came over 

and said, if I could get 50 to 200 acres more right adjacent, which 

the Air Force controls, I could create 5,000 jobs by making a cargo 

container port out of it. 

Last week—and this guy is gone. Carter is gone. He said ‘‘common sense.’’ He’s been here 3 months. I’ve been here 23 years, Carter, and you’re not here to hear this, but it doesn’t prevail. Last 

week they told him that they couldn’t—we’ll send him a tape, videotape. 

But common sense was—would be they want less than 200 acres 

of 16,000, and last week they basically rejected a sole source to the 

port. The port only happens to be the only entity in Florida that’s 

allowed to do port work at this site at Port Canaveral and they 

couldn’t give them a sole source. 

OMB, DOD, somebody, can anybody—does anyone know—can 

you look into sole sourcing? 


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Ms. COBERT. I’d be happy to. 

Mr. MICA. Could you review this and tell me what the—what idiotic determination would prohibit—I get a few more minutes because he yielded back 41 seconds before he exited. 

Mr. MEADOWS. The gentleman is recognized for another minute. 

Ms. COBERT. I’d be happy to look into that and get back to you 

around that. 

Mr. MICA. No. I mean, this is nut cases. We did the hearing 

down there. We got them to—the port gave us unsolicited proposal, 

and they came back and the Navy is a sublease to that. They’ll 

move them and pay for it. They need slight reconfiguration, and 

they rejected it last week. 

I just need to know the impediment because there’s a way to— 

there’s a way to do this. You have to be a persistent bastard, first 

of all, and then you’ve got to find a way to make this work. 

Five thousand jobs, I don’t know, that wouldn’t be important in 

your district, would it, Mr. Meadows? 

Mr. MEADOWS. Indeed it would. 

Mr. MICA. Okay. And he was telling the whole truth and nothing 

but the truth. 

Well, if you could answer that, you would make my day. 

Looking at that one case, I’ll send you—we’ll give you a copy. It 

doesn’t necessarily have to be part of the record, but it’s such a 

struggle. 

We are working with Mr. Chaffetz, with the committee, we had 

several bills for disposal of property and are trying to straighten 

out that process. Usually we find the agencies are not able to make 

decisions. They sit on it. No one in DOD could have an initiative. 

No one at GSA could have an initiative. No one at—almost any 

agency. I’ve got a list of VA properties. It would go from here to 

the—vacant properties to the end of the dais there’s so many. But 

we do need a mechanism to better utilize valuable public assets. 

Thank you, and I yield back two seconds. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman from Florida. 

I’m going to close this out without going into a lot of additional 

questions. You’ve been very gracious, both of you, with your time. 

I do want to say, Mr. Dodaro, thank you so much for your leadership in a nonpartisan way, and a real thank you to your entire 

staff for the work that you do. It gives us the tools to work with, 

not only here, but at OMB and—and so we just want to compliment you on a job well-done. 

Obviously, there are a number of areas that we would like to address, and so I would ask your staff to work with us, if they would. 

On those ones that require legislative directives, if you could put 

those in a list with a dollar amount, everybody is looking for offsets. 

Mr. DODARO. Right. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And so I think that that would be very good. And 

we’ve heard some today. 

Ms. Cobert, I want to follow up. Mr. Mica talked about this 

whole aspect. I’ve got a real estate background. And based on the 

way that we manage our real estate portfolio, it’s—one, it’s costing 

us. It’s not just the assets that are sitting there. It’s the management of those assets that become real dollars. I know that you’ve 


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made progress. I know that you’ve had some changes at OMB, and 

I gave some time from the last Congress. I have a long memory, 

though. And the year timeframe that I gave is coming up this July. 

The progress of which we’re making on that particular issue, it 

would take 234 years to dispose of all the property that we have. 

That’s longer than our country has been in existence, and so we 

could do better than that. And I say that only to say that we’re 

going to continue to look at that, even if it is coming up with a creative way to make sure that, when you dispose of the property or 

GSA disposes of it, if it goes back to the agency, you know, it’s better that we deal with it than just to let it sit there. Would you 

agree? 

Ms. COBERT. We’d be happy to continue the dialogue with you 

about practical ways to move the ball forward. We know there’s 

things there that—opportunities that can be captured, and we’d be 

very interested in continuing the conversation with you and others 

about how to move the ball forward faster. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So I’m going to—I’m going to ask this last request 

and that has to do with really what we know is tax expenditures 

and the way that they go into the budget and are accounted for. 

Do I have both of your commitments to work very closely together so that we can really fine tune that number from a budget 

standpoint to know what it’s costing us in terms of credits, tax deductions, et cetera, so that we can make better informed decisions? 

I see a nodding yes, so I will assume that’s a yes. 

Ms. COBERT. Our team will tell you that I’m a data geek, so better data is always helpful. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Okay. Well, I—we’re going to get along just fine. 

So thank you so much. 

Thank the witnesses. I want to thank the staff here for all their 

hard work. And with that, if there’s no further business, without 

objection, the committee stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:06 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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