This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 17, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Having denounced President Barack Obama's administration as "corrupt," U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has vowed to use subpoena powers of the House oversight committee he chairs to root out fraud and abuse in the government.
On Thursday, Issa tried to enlist an unlikely ally -- U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., an early political backer of Obama -- by inviting her and members of the Senate contracting oversight panel she heads to meet on occasion and swap information on their inquiries.
McCaskill, appearing as a witness at the Issa committee's hearing on "Waste and Abuse: The Refuse of the Federal Spending Binge," endorsed the idea. "I think it would be terrific if we just met for coffee once a month and talked over what you're doing and what we're doing and see if we can coordinate," she said.
Issa sealed the pact with McCaskill by declaring: "We'll have coffee, juice and -- if my personal account settles for it -- maybe even a couple of doughnuts."
McCaskill chairs the Contracting Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Issa's panel, which has a wider jurisdiction, is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose members include Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis.
In her testimony, McCaskill said she hoped the House and Senate oversight panels "can develop a strong working relationship." She said she would "enjoy the opportunity of working very closely with this committee as we tackle the incredibly challenging job of contract oversight."
In light of what many Democrats view as the partisan nature of Issa's inquiries -- he is such a polarizing figure that a group of liberal Democrats in California have started a website called the Issa Files to try to discredit him -- the interaction between his panel and McCaskill's subcommittee promises some sparks.
The ranking Democrat on Issa's committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., who has exchanged some choice words with the California congressman in the past, had invited McCaskill to testify to the panel. Cummings said Thursday that "no single member of Congress has been more active than Sen. McCaskill at rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in contracting across the federal government."
While Cummings said that government contracting costs had increased and should be investigated, he also contended that "the Obama administration has made significant strides to improve government contracting."
Issa was having none of that. He noted that Thursday was the second anniversary of the $816 billion Recovery Act stimulus plan, which Issa has made a prime target of his investigations and that he and many other Republicans harshly criticize. McCaskill voted for the plan and defends it.
Citing figures from a fraud examiners group, Issa estimated that U.S. taxpayers lose as much as 7 percent of government spending to fraud and waste. But he cautioned that "the full extent of taxpayer losses cannot be quantified, in part because the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is still unable to reliably track the fiscal condition of many federal agencies or accurately consolidate the federal government's financial statements."
The main focus of Issa's committee hearing on Thursday was the GAO's latest report outlining "high risk" areas of federal spending for waste and abuse. The major new addition to the list was the Interior Department's management of oil and gas issues, including its revenue collection, staffing and the impact of its reorganization.
U.S. Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro told the panel that "there are many open questions about whether Interior has the capacity to undertake such a reorganization [of its offshore oil and gas management] while continuing to provide reasonable assurance that billions of dollars of revenue owed the public are being properly assessed and collected and that oil and gas exploration and production on federal lands and waters is well managed."
McCaskill said her subcommittee would scrutinize the GAO high-risk list. "In total, at least half of the most wasteful, most mismanaged, most inefficient areas of the government today involve contracting," she said, telling an anecdote about the lack of consistent oversight on such spending in Iraq.
A former Missouri state auditor, McCaskill said, "We can't have an honest conversation about restoring sanity to government spending without talking about government contracting."