mr. ginman. we'll take your testimony now. >> i've learned to respond to almost any pronunciation. >> i know the feeling. >> so chairman mccaskill, ranking member portman, i welcome this opportunity to discuss the proposed comprehensive contingency contracting reform act of 2012. the impact the legislation would have on the department of defense. i've addressed the department's position on each of the provisions in the proposed bill in my written testimony so i'll not repeat that now. senator mccaskill, you and senator webb also co-sponsored the commission on wartime contracting and i'd like to thank both of you per your leadership on this important topic. it spanned three years and their august 2011 final report recommendations are the basis for many provision thfs this bill. the department maintains a scorecard to manage our progress against all of the commission's recommendations. the government accountability office is currently evaluating the department's implementation of the commission's r

mr. ginman, if we could start with you, i understand d.o.d. has established a pilot program under the director of defense pricing and the notion here is to create a more transparent and accessible, again, accurate, data base on prices. can you talk about the status of that program and whether you think it's working? is it producing savings? >> certainly. so i'll start out that the department agrees unequivocally that competition is the best way to get good pricing. that pricing -- the pricing effort, the pilot that's under the director of defense pricing is born from, frequently we do not have good competition and it's an effort to, what is it we need to do to be able to put into the hands of contracting officers when they're negotiating with companies the information they need? examples i would give, the director from his former life when he speaks, he frequently when he would need missile buys with the army, navy and air force, he would be the one person at the table that in fact understood what the entire department was doing because the ar

mr. ginman. miss crumbly. >> chairman mccaskill, ranking member portman, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the potential 'em pact of the comprehensive contracting reform act on the u.s. agency for international development. madam chair, senator portman, as you know the more than 9,000 men and women of usaid work to provide effective economic development and humanitarian assistance in support of u.s. foreign policy goals. how we improve our contracting practices, including in contingencies, directly impacts the success and sustainability of our mission. accountability to congress and the u.s. taxpayer for the funds we use is a duty, and it is a duty that we take very seriously. in november 2011 when the administrator asked me to leave the bureau for management, he did so because he knew i was a career civil servant making things work at the agency. i focused on making our business be practices more efficient and effective with the overall goal of enhancing performance while reducing unneces

mr. ginman, is i did have an amendment to pull all the aif funds out of afghanistan and have them go into the united states highway trust fund. and people didn't think i was serious. i was serious. and the reason i'm serious is the projects that are now on the board for aif, which is the morphine into infrastructure by the defense department, as opposed to a.i.d., which has traditionally done all this work, the projects we have ongoing now aren't going to be completed until 2014. if they're adding additional resources for the next fiscal year, that means we're starting new projects. i've not yet gotten from the defense department what they're envisioning these new projects would be. what i'm envisioning is if we're starting new infrastructure projects in afghanistan as we're trying to pull out of afghanistan, we may end up with that reality that i think is very hard for americans to understand, that our military would by and large be gone from afghanistan, but we'd have a full force of contractors that we'd be paying on the ground for years to come on projects that we really would struggl

mr. ginman. >> i have learned to respond to any pronunciation. >> i know the feeling. >> i have addressed the department's position on each of the provisions in the proposed bill in my written testimony, so i will not repeat that now. you have also co-sponsored legislation to that created the commission on wartime contracting, and i would like to think both of you for your leadership. the commission's efforts spanned three years at a final report recommendation on the basis for many of the provisions of this bill. the department maintains a scorecard to manage. residents of the commission's recommendations. the government accountability office is currently evaluating the department's implementation of the commission's recommendations, and we have been actively providing information on our progress to them. but the department has been and continue to be focused on improving of the original contract support. it has been a journey, and we believe we're making good progress. the bill we are here to discuss today is another positive step on that journey. the department of defense concurs with