Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016—Motion to Proceed
by Senator Ron JohnsonPosted on 2015-11-04
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JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise today to urge passage of S. 579,
the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2015. I want to thank my
friend, Senator Grassley, who just spoke, for his work on this bill and
for his longstanding commitment and dedicated promotion of
accountability and transparency for efficient government.
It is an unfortunate reality that the executive branch today is more
powerful, more expansive, and less transparent than it has ever been.
Senator Grassley and I are privileged to be the chairmen of committees
that have expansive authorities and responsibilities to oversee the
executive branch and all of its programs. But we need help in our
efforts.
We are fortunate that Congress in 1978 created crucial partners for
us: independent watchdogs embedded in each agency, accountable only to
Congress and the American people. They are the American people's eyes
and ears, and they are our best partner in rooting out waste, fraud,
and abuse of taxpayers' hard-earned money.
This bill is about increasing agency accountability and transparency.
It exempts IGs from time-consuming and independence-threatening
requirements such as the computer matching and paperwork reduction
statutes.
The bill also allows inspectors general, in limited circumstances, to
compel the testimony of former agency employees or Federal contractors
whose information they need to pursue cases of fraud and abuse. But the
bill also ensures that inspectors general are made accountable to the
public and to Congress.
Earlier this year, I issued a subpoena to the inspector general of
the Department of Veterans Affairs, in part to produce the over 100
reports the inspector general had completed but not made public. One
report that the VA inspector general kept from the public was a report
on dangerous overprescription of opiates at the Tomah VA Medical Center
in Tomah, WI--practices that resulted in the death of at least one
Wisconsin veteran.
This is how important transparency is. The daughter of the Wisconsin
veteran who died from substandard care at that facility told me that
had she known about the practices at the facility--in other words, if
the report had been made public--she never would have taken her father
there, and he could be alive today.
I want that to sink in. The bottom line is transparency and
accountability in government can literally be a matter of life and
death. The VA inspector general is not the only offender. In 2013 the
Department of Interior Office of Inspector General closed over 400
investigations but released only 3 of those to the public. This should
not happen. The public deserves transparency and accountability.
An amendment that I offered in committee, and that was accepted
unanimously, requires inspectors general to publicly post their work on
their Web site within 3 days of providing the final report to the
agency. So this bill will ensure that findings of misconduct, waste,
and fraud are exposed to the public and to Congress.
The public also deserves an inspector general that is independent.
One of the greatest threats to inspector general independence is when
the President fails to nominate a permanent inspector general and
leaves an acting IG in place who wants the permanent job.
In 2014, when I was ranking member of the Financial and Contracting
Oversight Subcommittee, we found that the former acting inspector
general for the Department of Homeland Security, Charles Edwards, was
compromised because of his desire to curry favor with the
administration to get the permanent inspector general's job. We found
he changed and delayed findings of reports to protect senior officials.
That type of behavior is completely unacceptable.
In addition to using our powers as Members of Congress to call upon
the President to nominate permanent inspectors general, as I have done
for the Veterans Administration, this bill requires an independent
study of problems with acting IGs and recommends ways to address them.
We know that many agencies are not in the business of transparency,
and they often try to restrict their inspector general's work. As
Senator Grassley already explained so well, we shouldn't have to
clarify what was meant when we said IGs shall have access to all their
agency's documents so they can do their work. Nonetheless, this bill
will make it even clearer that ``all'' really does mean all.
This is a bipartisan cause. We want all inspectors general to be able
to do their jobs well. That is why the substitute amendment I filed in
September has 11 bipartisan cosponsors, spanning members of my
committee, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
the Judiciary Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the
Intelligence Committee.
I want to thank my ranking member, Senator Tom Carper, for his
support and the other cosponsors for their assistance in getting this
bill passed. I urge my colleagues to support S. 579 and to support the
work our IG partners do every day to try to keep our Nation safe, our
agencies accountable, and our taxpayer dollars spent efficiently.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Justice For Former American Hostages In Iran Act
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, 36 years ago today, 53 Americans in the
American Embassy in Tehran were captured, beaten, held hostage, and
tortured. As I speak on the floor of the Senate today, in the streets
of downtown Tehran, Iranian people are marching in the streets, burning
American flags, yelling ``Death to America'' and celebrating the
capture of our citizens 36 years ago today.
