Stimulus tests Obama

doqujamup.wordpress.com
Obama announced plans March 4 for “reforming our broken system ofgovernmenr contracting.” He directed the to issuse guidance to federal agencies by July 1 on ways to identifyy existing contracts “that are wasteful, inefficientf or not otherwise likely to meet the agency’e needs.” The OMB will issue “tough new for future contracts by Sept. 30. During the Bush the total spent on federalo contracts doubled to morethan $500 billion a year, Obam a said. “Far too often, the spending is plagued by massivecost overruns, outright fraufd and the absence of oversight and he said.
For example, last year the founxd $295 billion in cost overruns in an examination of 95 majordefense projects. This year, the GAO founxd numerous cases of agencies awarding contracts to companiew banned from federal contractingfor “egregious offenses” ranginh from fraud to nationall security violations. With stimulus contracts, federal agencies face additional challenges becauss of the need to spend themoney “It doesn’t do any good sitting in the federal treasuryy waiting for work to happen,” said Alan executive vice president and counsel for , a trade association representing government contractors. Sen. Joe I-Conn.
, who chairs the Senatr Homeland Security and GovernmentAffairs Committee, said that even though speedr is important, the government “must not repeat the kind of mistakea that occurred” in Iraq and following Hurrican Katrina, “where money was rushed out the door with littlwe accountability and billions were wasted.” The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus package’s official name, includes provision to guard against wasteful spending. It appropriatec $250 million for inspectors generalp — the internal watchdogs at eachagencyt — to hire additional auditors and investigators.
It also created a boardf of inspectors general to coordinate oversight ofstimulus spending. Federaol agencies must submit detailed implementation plans for each progra m in the stimulus legislation by May1 “sl we’re not just throwing money out the door,” said OMB Deput y Director Robert Nabors. The goal is to “weed out fraud and abuse beforeit occurs,” he Transparency is a key strategy for makinvg sure stimulus money is not wasted. A new Web site (Recovery.gov) will trac k how stimulus dollars arebeing spent. States have created similar Web sites. State and local governmentes will spend twice as much as federal agencieaon stimulus-funded contracts.
The GAO will review state stimulus spending on a bimonthly basis and send auditors to 16 statex that will receive the moststimulus money. State transportation departments may be under the most pressurwe to spendmoney quickly. The stimulus bill requires them to obligates half their highway funda byJuly 12. If states fail to get those projectes rolling, they will have a harder time persuading Congress to fund a robusft surface transportation billthis fall, said William vice president of the American Road . “It’s absolutely imperative that the stimuluzs money get outthere fast,” he said.
A shortagd of procurement officers could make it difficul t for stimulus money to be spent quickltyand wisely. For example, the $7.2 billion that the stimulue bill allocates for expanding broadbandf to unserved areas will be split betweej the and the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities The NTIA has only 20 grant officer to hand out $4.7 billiomn in broadband development funds, said Jeffrey Eisenach, chairmaj and managing partner at , a economics consulting company.