Right now the incentive for agency is to add more staff and chase down more dollars and spend as much as you can at the end of the year. You mentioned spending caps. Sequestration caps and other caps hit at every single program. There are some programs that run more efficiently than others but a cap like sequestration hits all of them with an equal amount of fury. If eui gave the agency the authority to cut 20 from their budget there is very little oversight of which programs they will cut and they will keep the ones they like best and cut those that probably i like the best. Talk through different options you have seen for incentivizing agencies for reduction. I list 15 reasons why the Public Sector will never be as efficient as the private sector. The profit motive in the private sector is usually powerful and the government doesnt have that. Theres been lots of talk for payforperformance in the federal government for decades but it never happens and i dont think it can. The government has more rules because of structural reasons to prevent public corruption and they have no clear motive like lowering cost and maximizeing revenue. So i think the focus should be on fully illuminating programs and capping spending giving executive Branch Agencies more flexibility. I think executive Branch Agencies should and can do more to evaluate their own programs, perhaps agencies should be required to do detailed analyses and rank order their most ever efficient to the low he was priority and make it public so congress can see it and use it for Decision Making. More information is always better. One thing that i find striking about federal agencies you go to their website it is all good news, all essentially propaganda about the fabulous things but that is not fair to taxpayers. They should be required to provide more balanced information about their programs, their failings, and what the low priority activities they do are. The ultimate decision of the congress but i think agencies can do more to provide information to congress about where they fail. I agree. It is the taxpayers right to know. We have bipartisan input into that bill and it has passed the full house. We will send it to the senate. Just the basics of knowing each program and if there are metrics would be a tremendous asset to congress to make those decisions. Right now there is no description of all those programs or listing of the programs. What was mentioned about the hundreds of duplicative programs it is difficult to go through the work of identifying them because they have all different descriptions and locations. It was mentioned earlier about the rule change in the house. That was my rule change that went through on that to try to identify some of the duplicative programs and there is not enough teeth and i appreciate you bringing it back out because that is something i hope we can add more teeth so it is more than just identifying and listing this is duplicative but a prohibition as well. Are there other rule change things you have seen that would be an asset . It reminds me of the improper payments act the first one just identified them and the next two put teeth into it. I hope the rule that has been adopted would improve over the years. Because if you are prohibited from enacting a duplicative and overlapping program, then that happens solve that problem to start. I know rules change at the beginning of each congress and i hope that continues. It is amazing it took this long to have a rule like that because you would think an organization would want a duplicative rule. I was happy to see that because we started our research for the testimony we didnt know it was there. So, that is Something Else that perhaps needs to be emphasized to the committees, that this is a rule and they should be using it. Because it is citizens against government waste didnt know the rest of the groups dont know. It is new and it is a step process to be able to push on that. One quick question. One of the items you identified was requiring d. O. D. And v. A. To jointly buy Prescription Drugs. I have seen figures, you have a little over 4 billion in savings and i have seen figures as high as 7 billion in savings. The g. A. O. Report came out in early 2000 suggesting d. O. D. And v. A. Jointly purchase Prescription Drugs and they did and had millions of dollars of savings until 2005 and then 2006 d. O. D. Never really cooperated again. They have looked at it but i didnt know if you have any additional detail. That is one of those bipartisan areas to say why wouldnt we try to combine the drug purchasing between d. O. D. And v. A. Any other comments . I think you articulated it well. I dont think i have anything additional to add. Something we strongly support. That collaborative had really declined over the past few years and we are advocating for that to occur again. Thank you. With that, i yield back. The gentlelady from illinois. Thank you to all the witnesses for being here to share your thoughts. Over the past couple of weeks we have been debating whether we can afford to extend Unemployment Insurance as a life line for millions of americans. In my home district of illinois thousands of families were talked about last year in cuts to the food stamps program. At the same time in this very committee we have seen the waste that happens in government. It is really infuriating to me to think that i have kids in my district who are going hungry and yet there are 900 million of unused parts in a warehouse that the military paid for but couldnt use and continue to purchase. I would like to sort of talk more about the d. O. D. And its process. This past year my first year in congress two things have happened that really sort of crystallized in my mind the waste that happens in d. O. D. Especially under the defense logistics agency. One was the hearing in this committee on the supreme food contract. The corporation supreme Food Services that provide all the food in afghanistan the last decade. In fact, they have now been found to have overcharged the d. O. D. By 757 million for that food contract. They continue to get extensions to the contract and in a noncompetitive award process. In is something that the d. O. D. s i. G. Itself discovered and brought to light. I talked about the striker part a result of the d. O. D. I. G. Investigation. Could you give me any suggestions you might have as to how d. O. D. Can develop some sort of controls over the we talk about the audit process and i agree, we need some teeth in the process of enforcing d. O. D. But what about the d. L. A. If the only internal i. J. Is identifying these as problems what can we do . Let me confess first of all i was a coauthor of the study and i didnt work as much on the defense aspects. In terms of getting into the technical details, i would have to defer to my colleague who did a lot of work or perhaps some folks there. I dont know that i have an articulate answer for you. I would be happy to get back to you after the hearing. No problem. Mrs. Woo . A lot of consolidations were explicit in our report contracts and uniform designs for the Armed Services or support services that are schoolconsolidated management of bases and they can add up to a lot of money. In terms of the process of how that would go about, as i mentioned before we are not defense experts and we dont have anything to say about the process by which it would lap but they need to be addressed and consolidated and cut especially because i think as senator coburn said we have so many programs, over 600 programs for other departments and the same for the Defense Department. When there are multiple programs for uniforms that needs to be addressed. The uniform thing is after my heart. Im the individual who got passed a bill that would save 82 million by going back to a single camouflage pattern which is what we had most of my time in the military until 2004 when the marines developed their own. Lets switch gears and talk about medicare. I had an event in my district where we taught our seniors to look into Medicare Fraud and waste, taught them to read their own medicare statements. One thing that was shocking to me is the regional medicare representative who came to teach the course actually made the statement that they know that 10 of their payments are to fraudulent and wasteful claims, that they know and accept they have to have 10 waste and they are working to fix it. But that is like 1 billion a week. That is stunning that it is acceptable. I dont think we would accept it in business and we should not accept it in government. Can you talk about medicare waste portion of it, not just fraud and abuse but the waste . Yes, absolutely. That is appalling to me as well that they readily knowingly accept that 10 . You said 10 goes to fraudulent claims and improper payments. There are a lot of as listed in the report there are reforms that we have advocated for. One is better payments to Teaching Hospitals feel the medicines care Payment Advisory Commission has stated that the costs of Teaching Hospitals is much less than the government funding we are providing them. So better lining that would save over 10 billion the next 10 years. And there are plenty of other things. Bundling medicare payments so a number of payments go to number of different soepdz would advocate for more effective use of time, more efficient and effective services. These are important within the Healthcare System that we can and should change. Thank the gentlelady. We recognize the gentleman from michigan. I thank the chairman. I skwrusjust rode back from meeting with the Workforce Committee and was delighted to hear senator coburn talk about the skills act as being one of our greatest accomplishments even though it be limited. I think it fswas. Downsizing the numbers of redundant programs 35 ineffective duplicative including 27 identified in the 2011 Government Accountability office. I guess i would like to ask any of you that would like to weigh in in, the fact that this is unfortunately languished in the senate and what they are even thinking about offering includes only one of our proposals in that skills act, could you discuss further proposals to remove arbitrary roadblocks that would help get americans back to work in the jobs that are currently in demand . And i know on my own michigan website, the mijobs. Gov lists 52,000 unfilled jobs right now. We know there are many more than that but that is one website, a State Government website. The majority of reasons they are not being filled is people dont meet the Certification Requirements they have not been trained for it. Could you speak to that . What proposals would you have in mind to remove further arbitrary roadblocks to making people employable employable . Certainly creating pro growth policies in washington would be helpful and that do not include creating duplicative programs. He examined job Training Programs in oklahoma and it turned out the state was far more efficient at creating jobs because the training they were conducting was related to jobs. That is something that the government should be looking at as well. I know in the house the skills act was supported strongly by republicans, not as much by democrats. Some differences in how it should be done. Whether it is through legislation or pro growth policies or tax reform there are other ways. The government needs to be more out of the way than force its own view on how jobs should be created. Members seem to think creating jobs is one of their major skwrobls as opposed to getting out of the way so people that know how to create jobs know how including the states. I think that was one of the best points of the skills act. It give the flexibility and opportunity back to states to do that. Mr. Edwards . A broad comment on job training. I have looked in dames at job train details and the federal job Training Programs have never worked well. Over a half century to john f. Kennedy we reorganize them and try to fix them but the g. A. O. Comes back and basically says you cant really so that these things work very well. I think the federal government ought to get out of the job training business. The corporate and business sector of the United States does a much more massive job training on the job than the federal governments 18 billion is a tiny drop in the bucket and hasnt worked very well. I would take the federal government out of that. In terms of pro growth policies it is outside of the jurisdiction of there economy but in is a gigantic reform on the plate and there should be bipartisan support for Corporate Tax reform. We have the highest rate that makes no sense. You read every few weeks or every month or two about major corporations who are moving jobs elsewhere often because of the Corporate Tax problem we have. That is what president Barack Obama Says he is for it and republicans are for it. Why we cant do that i dont understand. Our neighbor to the north canada has a 15 Corporate Income tax. We have a 35 rate. It makes no sense. That is a big thing we can do because when businesses have lower corporate rates they invest more and buy more machines and you need workers to run them and the Corporate Tax cut would be a huge jobs bill in my view. I will concur with both chris and tom and add at the state level especially away see laws that place strong restrictions on the amount of job growth that can occur within a particular field of expertise and we understand when those are credited for surges, et cetera. But when for interior date decoratesors they are Just Protection inch from trade associations that limit the access of people seeking jobs to become employed. Im out of town but could mrs. Woo respond . Just to add a quick note, in terms of job growth i wont say anything much just in terms of t the content of our report. But at the same time the federal government is spending billions each year on subsidizing arrange arranging a tkpwra businesses which put Small Businesses and farmers at disadvantages. Tax loopholes and tax havens where companies can shift profit offshore and use a zero percent tax rates or minimal tax rate puts Small Businesses at a competitive disadvantage and hurts taxpayers in that they have to pick up the tab through cuts of Public Programs or more debts or higher taxes. That can really put a damper on job growth and being able to find a job and pick up your household in that way. Thank you. I recognize the gentleman from illinois, mr. Davis. Thank you very much mr. Chairman. I really think that all of the members of this committee agree that waste in government and unnecessary spending is un unacceptable. It also appears members would agree this committee is well positioned to investigate and examine issues of waste and conduct legitimate oversight work that holds agencies accountable and helps implement necessary reforms. Despite the various examples of waste identified during todays hearing, there has been some progress in this administration that agencies an congress should continue to build upon. President obama made it a priority to reduce improper payments when he took office, and we should be pleased to see that over the past three years the federal government has avoided making 47 billion in improper payments and recaptured 4 4. 4 billion in overpayments to contractors. Another initiative established by president obama is skewering americans value and efficiency award securing americans value and avenue award which taps front line workers for recommendations to help improve government performance and ensure that tax expire dollars are spent wisely. In your testimony you support the save awards. Why do you believe that the save awards can be effective in identifying identifying government waste . I did include that and i think that is something president obama includes credit for. He has included about 80 recommendations into his budgets the past several years. So language the same lines as whistle blower protection providing a structure for employees to report on waste they are seeing and devise systematic reforms to help limit those things that are wasteful. It makes a lot of sense. We can study budgets and reports all day but we dont have that same on the ground experience that these federal employees do. So, we need to tap into their expertise as well. Do you think that we will get from them more of an accurate accounting than other types of over oversight might provide . Whether it is more accurate or not i dont know but it is a different perspective and very valuable perspective. Since being a kid i have always been amazed at the amount of waste inefficiency, that was always pointed out in government. I have also been amazed that the notion that the private sector automatically is going to be more efficient than any Public Sector activity. I guess because of the profit motive motive. Given the profit motive though, does that mean that the level of benefit is going to be greater to the public or the benefit is going to be part of the profit that the private sector earns and there might be a kind of balance in terms of Public Interest in what benefits the public. I think it is just something to give thought to and consideration. But i certainly appreciate all of the areas of identification and suggestions that the government or federal government is making some progress by no means suggests that we are close to where away need to be in where we need to be in terms of ferreting out waste and efficiency. I thank all of you for your testimony and yield back. Thank the gentleman. The gentleman from texas. Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions. The waste report points out we are potentially spending close to 700 million to promote healthcare. Gov a website that doesnt work. I know that my colleague from missouri, billy long, had a bill out that would require advertis