Officials of three agencies running contracting operations in war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq on Tuesday defended their progress on implementing reforms required in the last defense authorization bill. Topics ranged from white-elephant construction projects to contractor suspensions to the politically disputed September 2012 fatalities at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi.
Representatives from the Defense and State departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development highlighted their own “proactive” initiatives to curb contractor corruption, save money and better protect U.S. personnel facing danger.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., called the oversight hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to gauge progress on reforms she was instrumental in passing as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. “It is much better than it was in 2007 in every single one of your agencies,” McCaskill said. “Everyone is making progress.”
But she lamented that the majority of the reforms implemented after a bipartisan commission recommended them “apply only to future contingencies, not Iraq or Afghanistan,” she said.
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