Date: 2007-03-15
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Madam "symptoms of the shortages of manChair. I yield myself such time as I. power and training for adequate conmay consume. tract management." And they note The administration strongly opposes that "the government cant retain perH.R. 1362. which would impose a new sonnel and fill existing job openings in statutory ban on how the government the acquisition workforce." uses acquisition personnel and would They also joined the working group restrict the executive branchs ability in taking issue with the sections of the to determine the appropriate funding bill regarding disclosure of government for acquisition workforce functions. contractor overcharges. While agreeing That is what they say on their state- that the proper use and oversight of ment on administration policy. We also government contracts is paramount. note that other provisions would im- they dispute any need for quarterly repose burdensome statutory require- ports to Congress on contract charges ments that overlap with more efficient that are adjudicated by the Defense administrative- efforts to strengthen Contract Audit Agency. the DCAA. the use of competition and reduce They note that these are unnecessary fraud. waste. and abuse. provisions and would force significant investment and government resources and additional burdens on acquisition personnel. So the ITAA comes out against it. They also note that another section of the bill that seeks more restrictive cost reimbursementtype contracts is also unnecessary and potentially harmful. They note that such contracts typically are used when uncertainties and risks are high. as in emergency situations. and development programs when it is -not feasible to set a fixed price for the work required. The Federal Acquisitions Regulations. the FAR. already establishes detailed criteria for proper selection of contract type. including limitations on the use of costtype contracts "for use only when uncertainties involved- in contract performance do not permit costs to be estimated with sufficient accuracy to suit any type of fixed price contract." Madam Chairwoman. if we want to fix the Federal contracting system. the appropriate way is to hire. train. retrain. and pay well our acquisition personnel so that they have a toolbox of acquisition options to use to get the best deal for the government in every case. get the best value for the government. The taxpayers dollars are at stake here. and their role ought to be to make sure thp taxpayer dollars are spent most efficiently. Adding burdens and layers and layers of regulatory reports do nothing to help that situation at all. and in many cases it can be very misleading as these burdens come out and we start taking ..out DCAA reports that have nothing to do with final adjudications of how these work. We already. by the way. have access to that information in Congress. What we dont have access to information is. and one of the things we would have liked to include. is to take final adjudications on costs that were deemed allowable and see what those costs are per contractor. That could have helped us in ferreting out which contractors are using these items. But this legislation does little to remedy those situations. unfortunately. Madam Chair. I reserve the balance of my time.