the senate can always ask for gao report. i do not think, however, that should be part of this legislation. we do not need special legislation to ask for gao reports. i think there is a better way for this issue to be handled. i think it would be not wise to go down the road and start asking amendments to this legislation for something of the nature of not really getting to the heart of the agreement. because any senator can ask for the gao report and because this is a legislation, it would change the article. and it would open up the house to its own changes, and it would be wiser if this amendment is not passed. >> the gao report, just for my good friend from west virginia, senator rockefeller, the gao report was done in 2007. this would just bring it up to date. it was done during the bush administration. so there is precedent. but i understand you are going to oppose it. >> if there is no further discussion, all those in favor? those opposed? have it and the amendment is not agree to. >> this is an amendment number seven,

sammon and the gao. the gao in the reports released out today, its stated today, page 12 and 13 it says our analysis of the tsa data shows from fiscal year 2004 through july 1st, 2011, tsa conducted the joint vulnerability assessments at about 70% of the regulated airports that existed at the time thus leaving about 83% of the airports and assessed. how can that be? in september, 2009 it would say that 87% of the airports haven't been assessed, and over that time frame we've not only moved that number to 17% assessment? >> the joint vulnerability assessments are done in concert with the fbi. the garden by their extensive assessments and they're done in a limited number of locations, but every single commercial airport receives an annual security assessment. >> why are there 100% done, a joint letter ability assessments? is the goal not to get to 100%? >> tsa as complete security assessments including the perimeter of all airports every year including wheat and 27,000 inspections. >> i'm asking of the joi

salmon and the gao. the report on page 12 and 13 says the analysis of tsa datasets from 2004 through july 1, 2011, they conducted joint vulnerable the assessments at 17% of regulated airports that existed at the time thus leaving about 83% of airports and assessed. how can that be? in september, 2009, there was a report this a 87% of those airports have not moved and we had only moved that number to 17% assessment? ">> the joint guilty assessments are done in conjunction with the fbi. there are extensive assessment and done in a limited number of locations. every single commercial airport receives an annual security assessment -- jva's aren't there 100% done? >> tsa does complete security assessments included garibaldi airports every year including 27,000 inspections -- >> i am asking about the joint venture. >> there are different assessments. >> what is your goal? do you have the goal of getting to one of the%? >> we will not get to 100% of 450 airports with the help of the fbi every year. >> it is at

do you agree with gao's findings? and what steps would you take as chairman to improve prompt corrective action and protect the deposit insurance fund. what would you do differently than what we've been doing? >> thank you, senator. i do agree with the findings of the gao report. i think one of the lessons we've learned from this crisis that capital tends to be a lagging indicator and capital is the indicator for prime corrective action so that during the course of this crisis to the extent we were relying on capital early warning devices signs for institutions they did not prove as effective as we'd like. i should point out that the pca still proved important because it established once an institution reaches that critically undercapitalized level of 2%, it provides for certainty in terms of the resolution process which is quite important. but in terms of an early warning indicator it has not proven as effective as. for each failing institution the inspector of the fdic has to prepare a report on the causes of the fa

sammon here and the gao.the gao in a report released out today dated today, on page 12 and 13 it says our analysis of tsa data show that from fiscal year 2004 through july 1, 2011 tsa conducted joint vulnerability assessments at about 70% of tsa regulated airports that existed at the time thus leading about 83% of airports on assessed. how can that be? in 2009, september 2009 there was a warrant issued but said 87% of airports have been over that timeframe we have gotten that number to 17% assessment. >> the joint vulnerability assessments are done in concert with the ei. they are done through extensive assessments and done in a limited number of it locations but every single commercial airport receives an annual security assessment. >> wait, wait, why aren't they are 100% jda's done? is the goal not to get to 100%? >> tsa does complete a security assessment including the permit of all airports year including we have done 27,000 inspections. >> i'm asking about the joint. >> there are different assessments. >

the second thing is the gang of six and commission gao report, about 1200 pages sitting on my desk which talks about billions and billions and billions of government waste, inappropriate payments, duplicate services and you hear nothing about that this week, nothing. >> the first is why the rating agencies were given such credit or attention when they are big part of the problem we recently had. we don't have to convince the rating agencies. we have to convince the global bond markets what we are doing is real. what the rating agencies are doing right now is simply repeating that their understanding it of how the markets are going to react and saying that they are going to mirror that in their ratings. >> you don't think the bond market mirrors the ratings. seems like they give the ratings and the bond market responds. sometimes you wonder which is the cart and which is the horse. i really believe we are getting to a point where regardless of what the ratings agencies do if the bond markets don't respond positively to what we do we will still see the rating agencies follow with a credit

cain was talking about going agency by agency gao came out with a report, enormous waste. how come we don't hear about any of that? maybe we don't need to raise the debt ceiling. >> if you could ferret all the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government and stop it immediately, you could be wealthy. >> greta: we paid the gao to do the report and now it is being ignored. >> that's unfortunate and that has to stop. i think the obama administration is doing what it can to help stop that. the point is, and if you could squeeze all of that aside, it is not nearly enough to close this enormous gap that we have between what we bring in and what we . >> greta: at least it sends a message to the american -- to the american people that yes we do care about your money. it is chump change when you look at the amount that is spent. at least it is the american people's money. if the people who are talking about the situation now don't bother to try to fix the underlying issues, it is distressing. >> it is indeed. as i point out, this is one of the things that gets overlooked when w

the second thing is the gang of six and commission gao report, about 1200 pages sitting on my desk which about billions and billions and billions of government waste, inappropriate payments, duplicate services and you hear nothing about that this week, nothing. >> the first is why the rating agencies were given such credit or attention when they are big part of the problem we recently had. we don't have to convince the rating agencies. we have to convince the global bond markets what we are doing is real. what the rating agencies are doing right now is simply repeating that their understanding it of how the markets are going to react and saying that they are going to mirror that in their ratings. >> you don't think the bond market mirrors the ratings. seems like they give the ratings and the bond market responds. sometimes you wonder which is the cart and which is the horse. i really believe we are getting to a point where regardless of what the ratings agencies do if the bond markets don't respond positively to what we do we will still see the rating agencies follow with a credit rating

gao makes reports about how to be able to save money in hhs. i am interested if ipab has the authority to be able to make recommendations that require supermajority from congress to change to giving to gao the capacity when they do a risk assessment on hhs and cost savings the authority to be able to make cost savings suggestions about that, and i'd like to empower the inspector general of each of these agencies to say when you find fraud or when someone rises up on the high-risk list, which multiple agencies are on the risk list for gao, i want to empower them the same way ipab empowers them, give them the power of law saying whatever recommendation you make about a reform, the department of energy, the epa, the department of treasury, whatever may be, let's empower the inspector generals in the gao when they make recommendations that they have the same authority as ipab. do you think that's a good idea? >> no. >> why? >> ultimately, i believe that the congress has the responsibility to make these policy decisions, and having made them with th

on may 26, the gao committee approved the resolution to renew the fillmore cbd with some conditions. one was that it becomes subject to the sunshine ordinance. the second was that the fillmore cbd more accurately reflect the intent and content of the bylaws. when seeing the draft resolution, i did not see those amendments. i was surprised and concerns. i ask that you support and approve the fillmore cbd renewal with those two amendments. thank you. supervisor chiu: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors. in 1957, i was a child. in 1958, the redevelopment agency walk up or made the announcement that the fillmore would be changed and that most folks would have to leave. my family was one of those families that left. over the course of time, the mayors, the supervisors, a number of others said that there would come a time when the african-american community, which had been, of course, as you all know, brought to san francisco to help build the ships that helped win world war ii, would be able to come back to the fillmore. that date has yet to arrive. i come not in oppos

both audit plans as defined by the gao, the government accountability office, as well as the controller's office -- we would do that in consultation. we would not be stepping on each other's toes. chairperson campos: great. if anyone would like to come up, they are free to do so. otherwise, anyone from the public who would like to speak, you have two minutes. >> i am a resident. i applaud these audits. i would encourage you to have more audits. secondly, i am a little troubled by the fact you are auditing the asian art museum, when in january you gave them a $100 million loan guarantee out of the general fund. it seems to me that you should do your audits before you prorate funding to city departments and city agencies. thank you. chairperson campos: thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon. my name is douglas yen. i would like to think this committee write -- once again for its aggressive stance in doing audits and holding hearings for future audits. it is pretty obvious that since the city is in such dire financial straits every block of money is important, no matter where it comes fr

but i am not here representing gao today. my testimony is based on a study that i conducted at the goldman school of public policy. they were interested in learning more about how various health reimbursement accounts worked. the difference supreme and health reimbursement account, held savings account, etc. -- the difference between a health reimbursement account, a health savings account, etc. what i learned during the study is that typically sell for reimbursement accounts have been used -- health reimbursement accounts are high-deductible health plans offered in tandem with spending accounts for the most part used as incentives to recruit employees or keep employees, given that health care premiums are very high. they try to incentivize employees to pay for a high deductible plan but put money in their account. in a lot of cases, this money is rolled over. although hra's have been offered with high deductible plans, they can be offered alone. that means that at this point there are accounts like that for catastrophic illn

both audit plans as defined by the gao, the government accountability office, as well as the controller's office -- we would do that in consultation. we would not be stepping on each other's toes. chairperson campos: great. if anyone would like to come up, they are free to do so. otherwise, anyone from the public who would like to speak, you have two minutes. >> i am a resident. i applaud these audits. i would encourage you to have more audits.

this is the first time they have researched what gao has said what the congressional research has said, what the individual inspector generals have said, what o.m.b. has said, plus we what o.m.b. has said, plus we have done our own research and said, gosh, given all these facts, common sense would say you do this. so there are 3,000 references in there to studies on our recommendations that we've made. and so i hope it becomes a place where people go to find out information about what we can cut. we could have done more. england just recently said you could recently cut 14% out of the pentagon. his assessment is that you could cut 14% of the civilian payroll out of the peg -- pentagon. that's $150 million over 10 years. that's a lot of money. host: what do you say about this being a naive cut? guest: washington doesn't cut because washington cares more about being re-elected than they do about the public. it comes from a lack of courage to stand up and do the best right thing for our country. when you are threw up -- through up here and you get out and the country is belly up r. you sa

and this is a direct result from the findings in the gao report. and i think that's positive. but i also feel strongly that these rules need to go further. shouldn't these rules -- and we're talking about the online also apply to brick and mortar institutions so that all of the for profit institutions are held to the same standards whether they're online or not? and additionally, with all of the fraud and abuse that we've seen, do you believe these rules should apply to all dod and va benefits and not just the tuition assistance programs? >> yeah, an interesting point you raise. we are focused at this time on online education, but it certainly seems logical we would be focused on making sure these soldiers get best value for the money whether they're in a brick and mortar schoolhouse or online. but as you know, this next generation is more likely to seek education opportunities online. that's probably why we've chosen to start the process there. i would support the idea that we should take a look at both. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senato

when the gao cn find $200 billion in cuts, that a significant. host:n your view, what is the proper role of government? guest: xiii, the government is ordained by god. punish those who do evil and reward those which is right. the government should be maintaining law and order and to be fostering a society in which exemplary behavior is rewarded and less than exemplary behavior is not. and there's a moral symmetry to the society. i think government and the country as wealthy as ours, we should be looking out for the welfare and health of the people within the ability of the government and the ability of the country to pay we cannot do everything. that is part of the problem. washington has been tried to do everything. they have been kicking the can down the road. now we've reached the place we can no longer can get down the road. we're going to become greece. there is no one to il us out if we go into default. host: our guest, the host of "richard land life, closed with a three-hour program. -- "richard land live," a three- hour program. guest: we

. >> greta: the gao, i spoke to senator coburn about this.ot it on my desk it is 1200 pages it goes through billions of dollars of things like you are suggesting. i think why does it take a crisis like now -- the report has been ignored since march. no one is doing anything. i'm sure the american people are horrify. the president asked us to make calls, he has asked republicans and democrats to call their members. what do we do to get you to go after the waste and fraud? >> to senator coburn's credit, he's one of the senate republicans who said if we did things like this on the entitlement programs he would support raising revenue by closing tax loopholes for ethanol subsidies and oil company subsidies. i have a prediction. i think speaker boehner's bill is going to collapse. because the tea party republicans don't want it. and we democrats don't like it because it does affect social security and medicare benefits watch the speaker is going to do is go back to the take for this so-called grand bargain for four trillion dollars worth of defici

gruenberg, a report by the government accountability office we call the gao as you know concluded thatmpt corrective action has not prevented the sizable losses to the department of the insurance fund. the gao found that lead bank debt under wind prompt corrective actions because of the capitol field since 2008 has produced a loss to the insurance fund. the gao also found that the coming and i quote, the presence and timeliness of the enforcement actions were inconsistent. for example, more than 80 per cent of the banks that failed were on the regulatory watch list that you elude it to earlier for more than a year on average before failing. do you agree with the findings and what steps would you take as chairman to improve prompt corrective action and protective deposit insurance funds, would you do differently than we have been doing? >> thank you, senator. i do agree with the findings. i think one of the lessons we have learned from this crisis is the capitol tends to be a lagging indicator and the capitol is the trigger for the corrective action so that during the course of the cris

. >> greta: the gao, i spoke to senator coburn about this. 1200 pages it goes through billions of dollars of things like you are suggesting. i think why does it take a crisis like now -- the report has been ignored since march. no one is doing anything. i'm sure the american people are horrify. the president asked us to make calls, he has asked republicans and democrats to call their members. what do we do to get you to go after the waste and fraud? >> to senator coburn's credit, he's one of the senate republicans who said if we did things like this on the entitlement programs he would support raising revenue by closing tax loopholes for ethanol subsidies and oil company subsidies. i have a prediction. i think speaker boehner's bill is going to collapse. because the tea party republicans don't want it. and we democrats don't like it because it does affect social security and medicare benefits watch the speaker is going to do is go back to the take for this so-called grand bargain for four trillion dollars worth of deficit cuts. and the ideas

won by a group -- and another by the gao which is more related to the programs we did during the crisis. correct me if i am wrong but my understanding is the fed generally speaking took a positive view of consistent application of cost benefit principle to the rules we right. >> my understanding is the inspector general of the federal reserve revealed that the fed internal written policy for rulemaking procedures is 30 years out of date and does not adequately reflect current statutory requirements before cost benefit. if that is not right, maybe we can both review this. if that is right, then the fed needs to step up to the plate assuming that is right. >> that is right. that is a statement of written policy and action will practice. we are very attentive to the cost and benefits. >> chairman gensler, i have asked you twice in written questions -- my colleagues and the whole committee -- how the cftc would exercise its authority with respect to financial institutions engaged in activities designated under that title. in both instances you responded with a discussion of the regulation o

the gao did a report saying there were about 20,000 between 2004 and 2008. and so we know that in mexico it's very hard to buy firearms of any kind. mexican law doesn't allow it. in the u.s. it's very easy to do that. and so it goes to show, you know, that you have a market, a ready market and a place that is easy to get firearms that you'd have this kind of trade. >> ifill: now there was this project called the fast and furious which is kind of famously, i shouldn't say blew up for the government, but didn't turn out the way it was intended and i weather whether-- bond wler this new rule was intended to speak to that. was there a connection an explain what it is. >> the theory was an investigation in the atf office in phoenix. and it was intended to monitor but not stop certain sales of firearms to people who were suspected to be buying weapons on behalf of smugglers who would then send it over to mexico for, to sell to the car 2e8s. there is a lot of controversy over it because essentially you have people who are suspicious and the atf was standing by and

and this is a direct result from the findings in the gao report. and i think that's positive. but i also feel strongly that these rules need to go further. shouldn't these rules -- and we're talking about the online also apply to brick and mortar institutions so that all of the for profit institutions are held to the same standards whether they're online or not? and additionally, with all of the fraud and abuse that we've seen, do you believe these rules should apply to all dod and va benefits and not just the tuition assistance programs? >> yeah, an interesting point you raise. we are focused at this time on online education, but it certainly seems logical we would be focused on making sure these soldiers get best value for the money whether they're in a brick and mortar schoolhouse or online. but as you know, this next generation is more likely to seek education opportunities online. that's probably why we've chosen to start the process there. i would support the idea that we should take a look at both. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much, senato

something to the congressional member and the congressman said, "are you telling me, sir, that the gao cannot account for $1 trillion?" that is all i am going to say. guest: chick spinney is one guy from the 1980's. even with the best efforts of these watchdogs, there is a small band that really crept up in the buildup during the 1980's. despite their best efforts, that is still going on today. host: democratic colleague from central harbor, new hampshire, welcome. caller: i have you up on my computer. my comment is not so much dealing with the parts that are overpriced or long term contracts, but in a military unit when they are trying to justify the budget for next year, it is always based on how much they used last year. when i was in the army guard, i was an aviator, and if we followed certain procedures that we could save fuel. he said if he used less fuel this year that they would get even next -- even less next year. my response was that maybe we would need less. the budget that people are given for the next year is based on what they do this year. i see this in patrol units whe

when the gao cn find $200 billion in cuts, that a significant.n your view, what is the proper role of government? guest: xiii, the government is ordained by god. punish those who do evil and reward those which is right. the government should be maintaining law and order and to be fostering a society in which exemplary behavior is rewarded and less than exemplary behavior is not. and there's a moral symmetry to the society. i think government and the country as wealthy as ours, we should be looking out for the welfare and health of the people within the ability of the government and the ability of the country to pay we cannot do everything. that is part of the problem. washington has been tried to do everything. they have been kicking the can down the road. now we've reached the place we can no longer can get down the road. we're going to become greece. there is no one to bail us out if we go into default. host: our guest, the host of "richard land life, closed with a three-hour program. -- "richard land live," a three- hour program. guest: we're

yet for 15 years, gao has been talking about the structural imbalance in the system and that it will be really important to act as early as possible to avoid really horrible choices later on that will really hurt people very dramatically. we have been arguing that having this discussion, and i congratulate the subcommittee for having this hearing and for having this hearing and raising some of these issues,

soundness act that created a new regulator for fannie and freddie asked for studies from treasury, gao, hud and cbo. cbo did a masterful job of analyzing how rich the subsidy was from the government that fannie mae received. um, they were visited by fannie mae executives, june o'neill who was the head of cbo at the time said she felt like they were being visited by the mafia. they were, she was pressured to try to water it down, not to produce this report that was very explicit about how much the government guarantee was worth to the company and how it all cost -- at all costs they had to protect it. so we have cbo people who were, you know, standing up against the pressure from fannie may. there are other people who saw what was coming, people in the, in the georgia area who were first to wave the flag and call out the rating agencies for, um, inserting themselves in if a process where georgia had the most, toughest predator lending law in the country. but the ratings agencies walked in and said we will not rate any securities that contain georgia loans. and so all of that predatory l

. >> the gao reported in 2006 there was a billion dollars worth of improper payments. has that been addressed? who were those given to? i remember reading about prisoners in baton rouge being displaced to prison. that was probably one of the most egregious ones i heard but where were most of those payments to end what has been done to make that better? >> over the last nine or 10 years what we have done is put a lot of controls in place after the gao report and actually look at what our error rate was. are error rate than was actually 10%. a lot of the controls we have put in place through a national processing center working with a number of folks within fema and outside of fema we have actually gotten our error rate down to 2.3%. >> some people have reported bad part of our problem, you know we have a shortage of money up here in part of our problem within fema is that we have a lot more disasters declared then we used to have. i think under reagan there were 28 and under the first bush, 44. it went up to 130 under bush and now we were up to 140 and i think we are al

this is the first time they have researched what gao has said what the congressional research has said, what the individual inspector generals have said, what o.m.b. has said, plus we what o.m.b. has said, plus we have done our own research and said, gosh, given all these facts, common sense would say you do this. so there are 3,000 references in there to studies on our recommendations that we've made. and so i hope it becomes a place where people go to find out information about what we can cut. we could have done more. england just recently said you could recently cut 14% out of the pentagon. his assessment is that you could cut 14% of the civilian payroll out of the peg -- pentagon. that's $150 million over 10 years. that's a lot of money. host: what do you say about this being a naive cut? guest: washington doesn't cut because washington cares more about being re-elected than they do about the public. it comes from a lack of courage to stand up and do the best right thing for our country. when you are threw up -- through up here and you get out and the country is belly up r. you sa

she has worked for the national endowment for democracy, usaid and gao. as a 2008-2009 international affairs fellow of the united nations, she authored a series of prominent articles on somalia and has provided content. she has traveled frequently to the month regions of somalia -- northern regions of somalia. she is currently a fellow at the one earth future foundation. then we'll hear from dr. martin must have my who is an internationally-recognized expert on piracy and unconventional conflict at sea. he is a visiting fellow at the corbett center for marry time policy -- marry time policy and was a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budget tear assessments between 2008 and 2010. he has authored a number of books, chapters and articles on somali price, international price laws and related topics. and finally, we'll hear from dr. david shin, has been a professor in the elliot school of international affairs at george washington university since 2001. prior to that he served 37 years in the u.s. foreign service and held the following positions,

. >> the gao, i think, reported in 2006 that there was a billion dollars worth of improper payments.as that been addressed? who were those given to? remember reading about prisoners in baton rouge getting them from being displaced from prison. that was probably one of the most egregious i heard. where were those payments made to do better. >> what we've done is put a lot of controls in place after the gao report. and actually looked at what our error rate was. our error rate then was actually 10%. error rate on when we've been able to do that. with a lot of the controls that we put in place through our national processing center, working with a number of folks within fema and outside of fema we've gotten our error rate down to .3% on our error rate now. >> some people have reported that part of our problem, you know, we have a shortage of money up here. and part of our problem within fema is that we have a lot more disasters declared than we used to have. i think under reagan there were 28. under the first bush 44, you know, went 130 under bush and now we're up to 140 and i think we'

finally, the gao estimates that the first year of dodd-frank will cost 11 agencies nearly a trillion dollars to implement that, of course, as taxpayer money. jenna? jenna: well, a trillion or a billion, peter, is it a trillion dollars? >> reporter: i'm sorry, a billion. thank you for catching that. see? i'm not wonky enough. [laughter] jenna: we saw it on the full screen, so i thought if i saw it, maybe the viewers saw it too. the either way, it's a lot of zeros. peter barnes, thank you very much. jon: a lot of zeros in the thermometer gauges these days as well. dangerous and deadly heat has a stifling grip on most of the country right now. the national weather service is placing 33 states under heat advisories. at least 22 people have died across the country because of heat-related injuries. louisiana just one of the states where it's so hot that roads are buckling under the intense heat. >> it's not only the major blow-ups, but it's also those smaller ones that we have to take care of. trying to keep up with these blow-ups and trying to make it as safe as possible for the city. jon

joan entmacher, and barbara bovbjerg from the gao. thank you all for being here. >> good morning, mr. chairman. thank you very much for inviting me here today to this subcommittee. my remarks today will focus on they needed to modernize social security benefit portfolio to improve the effectiveness to meet one of the water specified goals, one of the ones you mentioned in your opening remarks, the redistributive character of the program. in the opening analysis of my submitted remarks, i show how the retirement system has gotten more costly overtime. the results the results and table one relative to today will have borne peril taxes more than six times those of a worker retiring in 1955. in your opening remarks you mentioned miss fuller getting social security benefit. she did fairly well under the program. today, the bridges and are not doing quite as well. if you add in the supplemental costs, they are nearly triple what they were in 1955. workers are are exceeding one third of their lifetime paid just to cut -- just to cover retire

there's something that the general accountability office, gao tells us, there's something we call thempayments, improper payments last year for medicare were $50 billion. the attorney general, eric holder, tells us last year fraud in medicare was $60 billion. if we just cut those in half and do that over ten years, we'd be talking about deficit reduction in medicare alone of over $500 billion without reducing benefit but just going after some of the inefficient spending, wasteful spending. jon: we spoke last hour with karl rove who says that the president really needs to get out in the front and lead on this issue. in one of his opinion pieces, he said that this could be a nixon goes to china moment if the president would lead and come up with some big deficit reduction numbers here. do you see that happening? >> well, i'm encouraged that the president has decided to be around here the adult in the room. this could be a nixon goes to china, this could be clinton does welfare reform. i think the best jobs bill we could past that i could think of right now would be to pass a comprehensiv

i mean, for example, i was looking at a report from the gao office that showed there's a lot of programs that we have across agencies that are really a duplication. there's a lot of things that we should do to reform spending, and i believe that the level of the discourse and the concern over spending after we raise the debt ceiling, and i believe it should be with no strings attached, i do think that we will begin serious discussions around cutting spending, and i do have to say since i sit on the budget committee, the democrats did offer a plan, our proposal, around the budget that did call for billions of dollars in cuts. >> host: robert on the democrat's line. good morning. >> caller: good morning. i'd just like to say that i agree with no cut in social security whatsoever. there's only one cut i can see to be made to it, and that's illegal immigrants that do not belong on social security because they never paid into it. i do have a suggestion about balancing the debt. there's a guy out in georgia. he's called the penny -- something about penny. if you took a penny for every dollar y

it has to do with it, in essence, what the chair asked earlier about, multiple subcontractors and gao has raised concern about this, use of multiple tiers of subcontractors. they talk about concerns over project management, bedding, cost-control. i will focus on what area, what kind of contract. it seems we are creating the long economic incentives with the multimillion-dollar contracts are structured as cost-plus contracts. in that case, subcontractors earn more when it is up contractors spend more. -- when the subcontractor is spent more. he will be earning more when they spend more, rather than creating incentives for efficiency. other than having subcontractors -- subcontractors would profit from that waste at any level. do you think we ought to change it? should we use the contracts more widely, and why would that be feasible in these reconstruction efforts? what kind of projects would those work best on? if you think we should not move to a fixed cost contracts, why not? >> 95% of our contracts are fixed-price. we have a little subcontractors on them, because we tend to perform

first, william solis, the program director at gao. is responsible for a wide variety of program oversight. his portfolio includes operational contract reports, force protection for ground forces, supply chain management. equipment reset. i understand attending this hearing was very difficult for you. david sydney has served as deputy assistant secretary for pakistan and central asia since 2009. he was the deputy assistant secretary for east asia. prior to this, mr. sedney served on the security council in afghanistan and several other countries. he testified before the subcommittee in april. we have the newly appointed deputy assistant secretary of the army. mr. denver manages the army procurements mission, including the contracting business system. as the functional career representative for contracting, he represents the professional development of the army contract in work force. we have the assistant to the administrator and the director of the office of afghanistan- pakistan affairs since june 2010. prior to joining u.s. 80aid, h