WASHINGTON   –  U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (MO-08), the Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services, last week asked the General Services Administration (GSA) to provide answers to several outstanding questions about how federal stimulus dollars will be spent in the Federal Buildings Fund.  The agency received $5.55 billion via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“It’s not unreasonable to ask for a little transparency and a whole lot of accountability from GSA when we are dealing with huge sums of taxpayers’ money,” Emerson said.  “I’m seeing warning signs in how GSA intends to spend these funds when our nation can least afford to waste a single dollar.  There is a misconception that once these funds are out the door, Congress’ responsibility ends, but I am determined that this subcommittee follow through on its responsibility to U.S. taxpayers.”

Emerson’s letter, attached below, outlines five questions for GSA and asks for the criteria used to select federal construction projects, detailed analyses of energy cost savings, details of how the agency will discover and eliminate waste, justifications for spending money on over-budget projects, and an explanation for each project to modernize a federal building less than five years old.

“I don’t see the usefulness to our economy of taking money from American families and using it to modernize federal building which are less than five years old.  Nor do I understand why we would take a nearly-new federal building and add state-of-the-art systems to make it more energy efficient at the expense of simple, cheap things we could do to address our most inefficient structures.  It is symptomatic of the federal government’s wastefulness and disregard for taxpayers which is responsible for the spendthrift nature of our enormous federal government.”

In Southern Missouri, which Emerson represents, GSA recently awarded a 16-month federal rent contract for the U.S. Census, a $1 billion beneficiary of ARRA funding, at a total cost of $411,052.76.

“For that kind of money, we could build a facility for the Census.  GSA has a serious case of O.P.M. – Other People’s Money.  In the big rush to spend what amounts to 500 percent of their usual annual budget for federal buildings, it serves the taxpayers well to slow down and to ask these important kinds of questions,” Emerson said.