TANNER: REPORTS SHOW WIDESPREAD WASTE,
FRAUD AND ABUSE IN KATRINA RECOVERY

WASHINGTON -- Recent reports show how a lack of accountability in Washington has led to the wasteful misuse of taxpayer money in the days and months after Hurricane Katrina, Congressman John Tanner said.

Billions of dollars were spent on trailers that were not delivered, meals that were not served, boats that are not accounted for and cots that were never slept in, according to the reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Democratic staff of the House Government Reform Committee.

“It is astonishing how much money this administration has wasted without Congress, under its current leadership, even raising an eyebrow or asking a question,” Tanner said. “Somebody has to hold the White House accountable for the way it has been wasting tax dollars.”

Tanner has introduced H.Res.841, which would require congressional hearings to hold the Administration accountable for how it spends – or wastes – taxpayer money.

The September 6 reports from the Government Accountability Office discussed the following findings: 

• Congress has appropriated $88 billion to 23 different agencies for Katrina relief, recovery and reconstruction. No central agency, however, tracks that funding. Hurricane victims, affected states, Congress and the American taxpayers have no way to know how the money is being spent.
   
• The Army Corps of Engineers has been appropriated more than $7 billion to strengthen hurricane protection for the Gulf Coast. It has proceeded with a piecemeal approach to rebuilding storm defenses instead of first establishing a comprehensive rebuilding plan as recommended by its own study.

The House Government Reform Committee Democratic Staff prepared its report at the request of Tanner and five other Members of Congress. It included the following findings: 

• More than $10.6 billion has been awarded to private contractors for Gulf Coast recovery and reconstruction. Only 30 percent of those contracts were awarded with full and open competition.
   
• FEMA spent $3 million for 4,000 camp beds that were never used and $10 million to renovate a military barracks that was used as temporary housing by only six occupants.
   
• Because of a three-level subcontractor system, taxpayers paid an average of $2,480 per roof for a repair job that should cost under $300 per roof, according to a report from Knight Ridder News Service.
   
• Credit card abuse by government employees after the storm led to the unnecessary purchase of 2,000 sets of dog booties, costing more than $68,000, a 63” plasma screen television costing $8,000, and 20 flat-bottomed boats – only eight of which FEMA has in its records – at twice the retail price.
   
• The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General identified 1,395 cases of reported criminal activity, including officials who accepted bribes to inflate the number of meals provided by a government contractor and falsify the amount of debris a company removed.
   
• After Katrina, FEMA purchased 24,967 manufactured homes and 1,755 modular homes, at a cost of $915 million, for housing and temporary offices. The DHS Inspector General said that as of January, only 4,600 manufactured homes and 100 modular homes had been used. FEMA’s own regulations prohibited using the trailers in the most ravaged areas.
   
• More than 2,360 of the homes could not be used at all because they exceeded FEMA’s own size specifications. And six months after the storm, almost 11,000 homes, worth more than $301 million, were still sitting on the runway at an Arkansas airport.
   
• FEMA spent $1.7 billion to purchase 114,000 travel trailers. At least 27,000 of those trailers were purchased “off the lot” at sticker price without negotiation. Almost 24,000 of the trailers sat unused for months while their resale value dropped.

“This is gross financial mismanagement on a scale our country has never seen,” Tanner said. “Congress isn’t asking where this money has been going, and if Congress was asking, the administration couldn’t tell them.

"We cannot let this continue unchecked. It is time to hold the federal government accountable for how it spends the people’s money.”

Tanner represents Tennessee’s 8^th Congressional district and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and a Democratic Caucus task force dedicated to holding the federal government accountable for wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.

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Contact: Randy Ford, 202.225.4714