Among the new House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee chairs announced Jan. 18 by its chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is Rep. Todd Platts (R-Pa.), a familiar name for those who track congressional oversight on federal financial management and systems. Platts, who will head up the subcommittee on government organization, efficiency and financial management, chaired essentially the same subcommittee for five years until 2007, when Republicans then lost their majority standing.

FierceGovernmentIT briefly caught up with Platts to ask him about his plans for the current legislative session.

FGIT: So, what do you hope to focus on as the new subcommittee chairman?

Platts: First, I'm delighted to have the opportunity to come back to the full committee on Oversight and Government Reform and to work with Chairman Issa, and specifically to chair the subcommittee on government organization, efficiency and financial management. New title, but it's the same subcommittee I chaired from basically 2003 to 2007, when we were last in the majority.

It's all about issues that I have a great interest and concern about--basically, good government issues, and how we spend the taxpayers' funds and try to make sure that the federal government is more efficient, effective and responsible in how those funds are expended on the American people's behalf.

We'll certainly look at some of the big-picture issues, such as the consolidated financial statement of the United States government, which is the collection of all the departments' and agencies' financials brought together. For the most recent year, again, the Government Accountability Office was not able to provide a clean opinion on those. As we've seen in the past, the financials at the Defense Department certainly play a huge part in that inability of GAO to give a clean opinion.

There's a whole host of issues that relate to the challenges we have in how we are managing the public's dollars, and that will lead us into some specific issues that we will focus on as the subcommittee, starting with the issue of improper payments.

When I last chaired the subcommittee, the official number for improper payments by the federal government--which as you know, could be fraudulent payments, duplicative payments, some underpayments but not much--the official number was I think $37 or $38 billion. The most recent official number of improper payments by the federal government, in other words money that the federal government has paid out wrongly on behalf of the American people, is about $125 billion. We think the actual number is well above that and approaching $200 billion.

People don't send their money to Washington in order for it to be mishandled and misallocated in any degree, especially in the degree of hundreds of billions of dollars. We certainly will try to be focusing in on: How do we work with, partner with, the federal government department and agencies to ensure that they have good internal controls in place? That's what this is all about, when we're talking about wrongful, fraudulent payments. It's a breakdown in internal control processes. That'll certainly be an area of focus for the subcommittee.

Debt collection--there are also billions of dollars in uncollected debt that is owed to the taxpayers. For those average Americans who are dutifully paying what they owe in taxes or other payments to the federal government and comply with the laws and regulation, while others owe our government and not pay impacts every American.

I think the 2009 number was a non-tax debt of over $100 billion. I want to work with Treasury in how to strengthen the Debt Improvement Act to better allow the federal government to collect the money what it is appropriately and properly owed.

FGIT: One issue that occupied some of your time when you last served as chairman was OMB-led efforts to consolidate agency financial systems. That effort, called the Financial Management Line of Business, seems to have been entirely superseded by a new, different approach. Are you going to be looking into that?

Platts: One of the things we're in the process of officially asking for is updates to the collection of financial management tools, laws, regulations, to better ensure that every department and agency out there is properly complying with the varying laws that related to financial management. We're going to look at what we've done in the past, what the current administration is doing and how that differs. The bottom line is, again, partner so that whatever direction is followed, that it's in the best interests of the taxpayer.

One of the reasons I came back to this subcommittee is that in the past year, or years, what I've heard over and over at home is that we've got to be a lot smarter about how we manage the American people's money and the benefit that the American people derive from the trillions of dollars that are being spent by the federal government. With the public debt now at $14 trillion, we need to look at every aspect of financial management in the federal government and how it's being done and how it could be done better, and smarter.

We're going to be looking at everything, and our goal is to ensure that good government principles prevail. In our specific area of focus, that means very efficient, effective government operations that are accountable with the American people's money. When you see an improper payments number that's $125 billion, clearly there is dramatic room for improvement. I know Chairman Issa is going to make fiscal responsibility a priority at the full committee level, and I'm certainly honored to partner with him at the subcommittee level and make it our subcommittee priority as well.

FGIT: Are you surprised, or even discouraged, by how many issues that you examined during your last round as chair appear not to have moved very much or, as you said, might even have become worse?

Platts: It is discouraging. If you use just that improper payments number alone, the goal of the Improper Payments Act of 2002 was to put in place a process to not just identify improper payments, but to avoid them, and prevent them from happening. What we'd like to see is that number dropping--and to learn that instead of it dropping, it's almost quadrupled in the last four years is very discouraging and alarming. We're not going to waste any time getting right back into the issues and being very proactive in working with any and all parties who want to help the federal government become a good fiscal steward of the people's hard-earned dollars.

If it's legislative improvements that are necessary, we're going to partner with those departments and agencies to make that happen.

FGIT: Any other issues you'll be working on?

Platts: One in particular I got real close to--it's not within my specific jurisdiction, but the full committee's jurisdiction, and we'll be reintroducing legislation in the near future--is the whistleblower protection enhancements that Chris Van Hollen and I worked on. We got so close at the end of this last session and thought we were going to get to a final agreement with the Senate, but it didn't happen in December. So, we've got to start at the beginning again. But I think you'll see it move pretty quickly.

Federal employees out there on the frontline in all these departments and agencies who are trying to identify waste, fraud and misuse of tax dollars, we want to empower them to come forward and share what they see that's wrongful action, and know they can come forward, report it and be protected for doing the right thing on behalf of the American people. Even though that particular issue is not my subcommittee, if we can strengthen those protections it will help us as a subcommittee go after the issues we're going to be focused on.

I'm excited to be back on the committee and chairing the subcommittee.

For more:
- go to a press release from Rep. Platts' office
- go to a press release from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the new subcommittee assignments

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