YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

Democrat Senate Passed 94% of Bills without Debate or Roll Call Vote Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) dismissed Democratic claims of obstructionism and expressed outrage last week over a government report that shows the majority of bills that have passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate of the 110th Congress have done so without any debate or even a vote. “The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating, because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability,” Coburn told reporters at press conference Wednesday at the Capitol. “This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery,” he added. Coburn was referring to a non-partisan study released on June 10 by the government’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), which indicates that 855 of the 911 bills passed by the Senate of the 110th Congress have been streamlined by Democratic Party leadership with a procedural tactic known as Unanimous Consent (UC), which requires no debate or even a vote....
SBA Works to Correct Fraud, Abuse in HUBZone Program The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was “truly shocked” by allegations before a House committee last week that the Historically Underutilzed Business Zone (HUBZone) program was susceptible to fraud and abuse, and the SBA has taken steps to correct problems in the program, an SBA administrator said. A GAO investigation of the HUBZone program, conducted from January to June 2008, found that 10 of the 17 HUBZone-certified programs they surveyed fell short of eligibility requirements. The government watchdog uncovered that many of the companies involved listed addresses in HUBZones but employed no workers at those sites, operating instead from principal corporate headquarters in prosperous Washington, D.C., suburbs. All of the programs surveyed were in the Washington, D.C. area. As part of its investigation, the GAO also told Congress it was able to obtain HUBZone certification for four fictional companies. The HUBZone program, created in 1997 under the Small Business Reauthorization Act, encourages federal contracting opportunities for small business firms in economically distressed areas....
Report: Empty Iraq prison a $40 million failure In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein. "It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad. The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif. "This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure." In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled. Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" — or more than $4 billion — from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund....
9 legislators have been charged since 2000 Members of Congress charged with crimes since 2000: July 29, 2008: Senator Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican, indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of services he received from an oil services company. Feb. 22, 2008: Representative Rick Renzi, Arizona Republican, indicted on charges of extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other crimes in a land swap that authorities say helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs. June 11, 2007: Senator Larry Craig, Idaho Republican, arrested in a bathroom sex sting at the Minneapolis airport. Pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. Now asking a state appeals court to let him withdraw his guilty plea. June 4, 2007: Representative William Jefferson, Louisiana Democrat, indicted on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes, and money laundering in a long-running bribery investigation into business deals....