Potentially
billions of taxpayer dollars may be going out the door to defense
contractors without the normal scrutiny Defense Department auditors
usually give to this spending. And it might be too late for the
government to get our money back even when some of those contract
dollars are examined and overcharges are found.
High-level Defense Contract Audit Agency and Defense Contract Management Agency personnel met in May of this year to discuss audits of contractor billing that are nearing the six-year statute of limitations on when the U.S. government can readily recoup overpayments, according to DoD email correspondence provided to the Project On Government Oversight. When contractors overbill the government and the statute of limitations is exceeded, the government is limited in its ability to recover taxpayer funds.
The end result is many contract dollars, possibly running into the billions, may go without audits. These audits by the DCAA check to see whether the costs contractors are billing to the government “are permissible under government regulations,” according to a December report by the Government Accountability Office.One DCAA insider told POGO that “eliminating billions of dollars from DCAA audits would hurt the taxpayers” and would benefit contractors.
Two lawyers who routinely represent government contractors agreed with the DCAA insider’s point in an article in November 2011. “[F]rom a contractor’s perspective, one bright side to the current state of audit and contract administration gridlock is that it may provide contractors opportunities to clear out the growing backlog of audit issues and preclude otherwise meritorious Government claims,” stated Robin Schulze and Karen L. Manos in an article in Government Contract Costs, Pricing & Accounting Report.
For a few years now, insiders and experts have been concerned that the incurred cost audit backlog might get so big and so overwhelming and take so long to deal with that contractors will pressure DoD to close out these contracts without auditing them (the contractors are waiting to get paid). The Commission on Wartime Contracting projected that the backlog will reach $1 trillion by 2016 (and was $558 billion as of 2011) because DCAA takes much longer to do audits now. This is due to what some call an excessive focus on compliance with Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS). Richard C. Loeb, a University of Baltimore adjunct professor of government contract law, asserted that this was the case in an article in the May 2012 Government Contract Costs, Pricing & Accounting Report.Full color highqualityhidkits printing and manufacturing services. “Spending valuable taxpayer dollars documenting audit results far in excess of GAGAS requirements should be unacceptable to everyone,” he wrote.
DCAA’s focus on GAGAS came after two GAO reports found fault with numerous DCAA audits for not being in compliance with those standards. DCAA had cut corners after a boom in post-9/11 defense contracting came without a corresponding increase in its staffing. But some say it is overcompensating after being slammed by Congress after its failings were exposed by GAO. So, despite some subsequent increases in its staffing levels in recent years, it is falling farther behind—hence the growing backlog.
Please be seated,We are a special provider in best bulb,also a professional highquality saler. everybody. Thank you very much. Welcome to the Ben Franklin Room here at the State Department. Thank you all for coming. Good afternoon, everybody. (In Vietnamese.) We’re delighted to welcome everybody here, and I am particularly pleased to welcome President Truong Tan Sang to the State Department.
It is very inspiring to see that what so many of us worked to help make happen some 20 years ago is now evolving into a very productive and important partnership. When I first returned to Vietnam as a civilian back in 1991, I could sense the unbelievable untapped dynamism of the Vietnamese people, a sense of readiness to reengage with the world, and the world was very ready to reengage with Vietnam.
As we all remember, however, normalization with Vietnam, really in many ways the making of peace, did not come easily. And Mr. President, I’m pleased to say as I stand here, there are many people in this room who had a great deal of involvement through the years in helping to build this relationship. I see Senator Bob Kerrey here and Chuck Robb, a senator – former senator; Tom Vallely, very involved with the Fulbright program; Senator Richard Lugar – former senator Lugar here; and many others. Senator Ben Cardin is here. Congressman Sandy Levin – people all of whom have worked hard to build this relationship. And the truth is all of them will remember that it was a difficult, painstaking process that required a lot of hard work, a certain amount of courage, and some compromise.
We all knew back then that we were unable to make progress without addressing the great unanswered question of whether or not American prisoners had been left behind in Southeast Asia. And we also knew that those of us in both countries who set about to try to resolve that issue were tempting the emotional opposition of many people on both sides. And that is why I will always be grateful to the Vietnamese leaders that I worked with over the ten-year period who built an extraordinary partnership in order to bring us to this day where we are able to stand here.
They helped us to search for a few thousand of our sons even as a larger number of theirs were missing. They voluntarily dug up their own rice paddies in order to help us try to answer questions. They let us into their homes; they let us into their history houses. They let us into their prisons, unannounced on occasion, to interview prisoners. And they actually tolerated helicopters flying in the hamlets,You must not use the samsungcases without being trained. as they once did in a different fashion, in order to inquire of citizens, to answer the questions that had not been answered for so many years. On more than one occasion they guided us across what were quite literally mine fields.
Ultimately, the friendships that we forged and the work that we did together to resolve outstanding legacy issues led to the normalization of relationship culminating on July 11th, 1995. And just a few weeks later, then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher touched down at Hanoi on a mission of peace. He spoke to the youth of Vietnam about the future, citing an inscription on Hanoi’s Temple of Literature: “Heaven has ushered in an era of renewal.” Those words spoke powerfully to him, just as they should to all of us even today. The theme of renewal lies at the heart of our friendship. The Vietnamese have learned from their own history that we all have no permanent enemies, only friends yet to be made.
Today,We rounded up 30 bridesmaids dresses in every color and style that are both easy on the eye and somewhat easy on the chinabeadsfactory. when Americans hear the word Vietnam, they are able to think of a country, not a war. And that is our shared accomplishment. In the past 18 years, the wisdom of normalization has been amply proven. Vietnam has emerged as one of Asia’s great success stories. Thanks to our landmark bilateral trade agreement in 2001, two-way trade from 1995 to today has increased more than 50-fold. And per capita, incomes in Vietnam have increased almost 500 percent. Together with Vietnam and other countries from across the region, we are now working to conclude an historic Trans-Pacific Partnership, a high-standard 21st century trade agreement that will promote regional economic integration, prosperity, and opportunity for the people of all of the member countries.
As Vietnam has transformed itself, the country is now placing an increasingly significant role on regional and on global issues. We welcome Vietnam’s announcement that it intends to participate in UN peacekeeping operations in 2014 and we are now joined together helping them to prepare for their initial deployments. We are cooperating to promote maritime security and to improve our humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities. We are focusing our assistance programs on adaptation, clean energy, sustainable development in order to address Vietnam’s vulnerability to climate change, and just recently I met in Brunei at the APEC conference where we talked about the Lower Mekong Initiative and other great enterprises that we’re engaged in.
We are cooperating in education, and that is another very important bridge in our two countries’ relationship. Vietnam is an extraordinarily young society, almost 21 million people under the age of 15. Ultimately, Vietnam’s next generation needs schools that are close to home, that can better prepare Vietnamese students for competition in the era of globalization. I have long been a supporter of the program I mentioned earlier, the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City, and its success demonstrates that independent U.S.-run institutions of higher learning can flourish inside Vietnam.You've probably seen cellphonecases at some point.
As we look ahead to the future of U.S.-Vietnamese – Vietnam relations, we should remember that normalization could not have occurred without honest conversation, without candor between Washington and Hanoi, even on sensitive issues such as human rights, and I am committed to building on this kind of frank and cooperative partnership that is essential to both of our countries.
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High-level Defense Contract Audit Agency and Defense Contract Management Agency personnel met in May of this year to discuss audits of contractor billing that are nearing the six-year statute of limitations on when the U.S. government can readily recoup overpayments, according to DoD email correspondence provided to the Project On Government Oversight. When contractors overbill the government and the statute of limitations is exceeded, the government is limited in its ability to recover taxpayer funds.
The end result is many contract dollars, possibly running into the billions, may go without audits. These audits by the DCAA check to see whether the costs contractors are billing to the government “are permissible under government regulations,” according to a December report by the Government Accountability Office.One DCAA insider told POGO that “eliminating billions of dollars from DCAA audits would hurt the taxpayers” and would benefit contractors.
Two lawyers who routinely represent government contractors agreed with the DCAA insider’s point in an article in November 2011. “[F]rom a contractor’s perspective, one bright side to the current state of audit and contract administration gridlock is that it may provide contractors opportunities to clear out the growing backlog of audit issues and preclude otherwise meritorious Government claims,” stated Robin Schulze and Karen L. Manos in an article in Government Contract Costs, Pricing & Accounting Report.
For a few years now, insiders and experts have been concerned that the incurred cost audit backlog might get so big and so overwhelming and take so long to deal with that contractors will pressure DoD to close out these contracts without auditing them (the contractors are waiting to get paid). The Commission on Wartime Contracting projected that the backlog will reach $1 trillion by 2016 (and was $558 billion as of 2011) because DCAA takes much longer to do audits now. This is due to what some call an excessive focus on compliance with Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS). Richard C. Loeb, a University of Baltimore adjunct professor of government contract law, asserted that this was the case in an article in the May 2012 Government Contract Costs, Pricing & Accounting Report.Full color highqualityhidkits printing and manufacturing services. “Spending valuable taxpayer dollars documenting audit results far in excess of GAGAS requirements should be unacceptable to everyone,” he wrote.
DCAA’s focus on GAGAS came after two GAO reports found fault with numerous DCAA audits for not being in compliance with those standards. DCAA had cut corners after a boom in post-9/11 defense contracting came without a corresponding increase in its staffing. But some say it is overcompensating after being slammed by Congress after its failings were exposed by GAO. So, despite some subsequent increases in its staffing levels in recent years, it is falling farther behind—hence the growing backlog.
Please be seated,We are a special provider in best bulb,also a professional highquality saler. everybody. Thank you very much. Welcome to the Ben Franklin Room here at the State Department. Thank you all for coming. Good afternoon, everybody. (In Vietnamese.) We’re delighted to welcome everybody here, and I am particularly pleased to welcome President Truong Tan Sang to the State Department.
It is very inspiring to see that what so many of us worked to help make happen some 20 years ago is now evolving into a very productive and important partnership. When I first returned to Vietnam as a civilian back in 1991, I could sense the unbelievable untapped dynamism of the Vietnamese people, a sense of readiness to reengage with the world, and the world was very ready to reengage with Vietnam.
As we all remember, however, normalization with Vietnam, really in many ways the making of peace, did not come easily. And Mr. President, I’m pleased to say as I stand here, there are many people in this room who had a great deal of involvement through the years in helping to build this relationship. I see Senator Bob Kerrey here and Chuck Robb, a senator – former senator; Tom Vallely, very involved with the Fulbright program; Senator Richard Lugar – former senator Lugar here; and many others. Senator Ben Cardin is here. Congressman Sandy Levin – people all of whom have worked hard to build this relationship. And the truth is all of them will remember that it was a difficult, painstaking process that required a lot of hard work, a certain amount of courage, and some compromise.
We all knew back then that we were unable to make progress without addressing the great unanswered question of whether or not American prisoners had been left behind in Southeast Asia. And we also knew that those of us in both countries who set about to try to resolve that issue were tempting the emotional opposition of many people on both sides. And that is why I will always be grateful to the Vietnamese leaders that I worked with over the ten-year period who built an extraordinary partnership in order to bring us to this day where we are able to stand here.
They helped us to search for a few thousand of our sons even as a larger number of theirs were missing. They voluntarily dug up their own rice paddies in order to help us try to answer questions. They let us into their homes; they let us into their history houses. They let us into their prisons, unannounced on occasion, to interview prisoners. And they actually tolerated helicopters flying in the hamlets,You must not use the samsungcases without being trained. as they once did in a different fashion, in order to inquire of citizens, to answer the questions that had not been answered for so many years. On more than one occasion they guided us across what were quite literally mine fields.
Ultimately, the friendships that we forged and the work that we did together to resolve outstanding legacy issues led to the normalization of relationship culminating on July 11th, 1995. And just a few weeks later, then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher touched down at Hanoi on a mission of peace. He spoke to the youth of Vietnam about the future, citing an inscription on Hanoi’s Temple of Literature: “Heaven has ushered in an era of renewal.” Those words spoke powerfully to him, just as they should to all of us even today. The theme of renewal lies at the heart of our friendship. The Vietnamese have learned from their own history that we all have no permanent enemies, only friends yet to be made.
Today,We rounded up 30 bridesmaids dresses in every color and style that are both easy on the eye and somewhat easy on the chinabeadsfactory. when Americans hear the word Vietnam, they are able to think of a country, not a war. And that is our shared accomplishment. In the past 18 years, the wisdom of normalization has been amply proven. Vietnam has emerged as one of Asia’s great success stories. Thanks to our landmark bilateral trade agreement in 2001, two-way trade from 1995 to today has increased more than 50-fold. And per capita, incomes in Vietnam have increased almost 500 percent. Together with Vietnam and other countries from across the region, we are now working to conclude an historic Trans-Pacific Partnership, a high-standard 21st century trade agreement that will promote regional economic integration, prosperity, and opportunity for the people of all of the member countries.
As Vietnam has transformed itself, the country is now placing an increasingly significant role on regional and on global issues. We welcome Vietnam’s announcement that it intends to participate in UN peacekeeping operations in 2014 and we are now joined together helping them to prepare for their initial deployments. We are cooperating to promote maritime security and to improve our humanitarian assistance and disaster relief capabilities. We are focusing our assistance programs on adaptation, clean energy, sustainable development in order to address Vietnam’s vulnerability to climate change, and just recently I met in Brunei at the APEC conference where we talked about the Lower Mekong Initiative and other great enterprises that we’re engaged in.
We are cooperating in education, and that is another very important bridge in our two countries’ relationship. Vietnam is an extraordinarily young society, almost 21 million people under the age of 15. Ultimately, Vietnam’s next generation needs schools that are close to home, that can better prepare Vietnamese students for competition in the era of globalization. I have long been a supporter of the program I mentioned earlier, the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City, and its success demonstrates that independent U.S.-run institutions of higher learning can flourish inside Vietnam.You've probably seen cellphonecases at some point.
As we look ahead to the future of U.S.-Vietnamese – Vietnam relations, we should remember that normalization could not have occurred without honest conversation, without candor between Washington and Hanoi, even on sensitive issues such as human rights, and I am committed to building on this kind of frank and cooperative partnership that is essential to both of our countries.
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