Waste Watchers: Fraud and Abuse - Special Order
Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to add my voice to those of my fellow freshman representatives calling for increased efficiency in our federal government. Our charge is to protect precious dollars taken from the taxpayer by streamlining and improving our federal government.
There are many important programs that are being hurt and neglected with the expenditures that could have been handled with much greater care. With careful stewardship, we could ensure that public servants have more prudent oversight when allocating American taxpayer dollars for federal programs.
I believe there is a need for increased efficiency in the U.S. Department of Transportation programs. Savings in transportation programs, such as federal-aid highways and Federal Transit Administration programs, will mean more money invested efficiently for our country’s transportation infrastructure.
As a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I wanted to make sure the U.S. Department of Transportation was ensuring the most efficient business practices within the agency. On March 19, 2003, I met with Inspector General Kenneth Mead to discuss the business practices of the agency and how the Congress can better facilitate the decrease of inappropriate expenditures in relation to transportation spending.
Inspector General Mead and I discussed the need for greater stewardship and oversight of all of DOT’s programs. In fact, the House Transportation Committee believes government efficiency is important because yesterday, the Committee held a hearing on the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse in mandatory transportation programs as required by the FY 2004 budget resolution reconciliation instructions.
In yesterday’s hearing, U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General Mead and Federal Highways Administrator Mary Peters outlined several ways in which we can make the most of federal dollars used in state transportation projects. One option is improving financial management and increasing revenue collections by stopping fuel tax evasion. For example, it has come to the attention of Congress that enforcement efforts in certain areas of tax collection lag behind the efforts of the criminal element to beat the system and reap untold criminal profits from our government coffers. Specifically, fuels excise tax enforcement technologies have not kept up with aggressive organized crime group’s methods to adulterate fuels and deny the appropriate collection of taxes. These uncollected tax dollars should be going directly to fund programs that are critical to the maintenance and development of our nation’s transportation infrastructure.
I recently visited a company in my district called Isotag to learn about their progressive technologies. Isotag's mission as a science and technology company is to deliver comprehensive authentication solutions to defeat brand compromise. Isotag’s comprehensive authentication solutions allow companies to identify, deter and remediate problems in their supply chains and ultimately recover significant revenue being lost to fraudulent activities. This company has invented invisible molecular and near-infrared markers that are impossible to counterfeit, cost effective, and legally defensible as evidence in court proceedings. I believe Isotag’s technology is one such example of a cost-effective measure that the U.S. Department of Transportation could investigate in relation to stopping fuel tax evasion.
I certainly hope that in addition to examining the issues of waste, fraud, and abuse in mandatory transportation programs that the Committee also considers methods that will allow for the increased enforcement necessary to stop fraud of all types. The Washington Waste Watchers are dedicated to protecting taxpayers hard earned dollars from being spent on government’s inappropriate expenditures. We need to work together to ensure our federal government is more effective and efficient for the American taxpayer. I believe the Committee’s report and ongoing work with the U.S. Department of Transportation is one step closer toward that goal.
