Press Releases

“As citizen watchdogs, Americans have the right to keep an eye on their government and are entitled to a federal government that is both transparent and accountable,” Chairman Issa said in a statement. “Disclosure should be timely, accurate, and routine. H.R. 1211 enacts commonsense reforms that will reduce the backlog of FOIA requests from federal agencies by strengthening the Office of Government Information Services and creating an online request system. The reforms in the FOIA bill ...

“Too often, our Committee sees and reviews billion dollar write-offs of IT programs, in which you cannot find out who was in charge, you cannot find out why they went on so long, and the hardest thing to find out is why they don’t work at the end of a billion dollars,” Issa said. “Good software saves billions of dollars and countless lives and countless hours if it works. Bad or poorly done software can frustrate the American public and deprive them of very product or service they ...

“The federal government is currently spending in excess of $80 billion dollars for information technology investments, and often we get little back in terms of results. IT acquisition program failure rates and cost overruns are between 72 percent and 80 percent. Some estimate as much as $20 billion is wasted annually in this area. We need to enhance the best value to the taxpayer by adapting the cumbersome federal acquisition process to major trends in the IT industry.

“This bill links the growth of resources for the Inspector General of the Office of Personnel Management to that of the agency he oversees. I applaud Chairman Farenthold’s efforts in stewarding this common sense reform into law.”

“Today, the Committee advanced several bills that will open and improve transparency around the frequently inscrutable regulatory process,” Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said. “The ALERT Act ensures that citizens and business owners no longer have to wonder what costly new rules and regulations agencies are putting on the books next. By making this information regularly reported and accessible to the public, we can increase accountability for the billions of dollars of ...

“The government has a responsibility to provide a safety net for individuals who truly need public assistance,” the letter, signed by Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Subcommittee Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., states. “However, New York’s Medicaid program has fostered a system that over the past two decades has wasted vast sums of our nation’s limited resources.”

“No legislation or congressional action can repair the damage that Aaron Alexis inflicted on both the families of his victims as well as the Nation as a whole,” the report states. “Nonetheless, Congress has a responsibility to investigate the process that permitted Aaron Alexis to receive and maintain a security clearance, and Congress must take steps to improve that process to prevent dangerous people from gaining access to secure federal facilities and information. Congress, [the ...

“Reestablishing OPA raises serious concerns about the illegal use of taxpayer funds to support congressional campaigns during the 2014 midterm elections,” said Issa in the letter. “The reasoning behind the Obama White House reopening OPA is particularly troubling,” the letter continues. “An ‘overtly partisan’ office in the White House that coordinates with congressional candidates seems to be precisely the type of ‘political boiler-room’ prohibited by the Hatch Act. In ...

“The president’s repeated delays and arbitrary enforcement of his health care law cannot distract from the facts: this law has resulted in millions of Americans losing their insurance coverage, rising health care costs, and an estimated 2.5 million jobs that will be lost from the workforce,” said Chairman Issa. “The Administration’s ad hoc implementation of ObamaCare adds significant uncertainty to the economy and further hinders small businesses from expanding and creating jobs in ...

“The evidence gathered by the Committees indicates that neither IRS nor the Treasury Department conducted a serious or thorough analysis of the PPACA statute or the law’s legislative history with respect to the government’s authority to provide premium subsidies in exchanges established by the federal government,” the report states. “IRS and Treasury merely asserted that they possessed such authority without providing the Committees with evidence to indicate that they came to their ...