Yesterday, the conference committee assembled to hash out a final weapons acquisition reform bill released the new legislation and a summary report after the two sides came to agreement on Tuesday over the few issues of contention. We are currently going through the language of the bill to assess the final product, but it looks as though the conferees did not strengthen the potentially disastrous Murray amendment, and chose an independent cost analyst reporting to the Secretary of Defense over just an assistant to the secretary. If we catch anything appalling, we will post it, or, if you read through and see anything, please post your comments.

On Tuesday, May 19, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote a bill (H.R. 2182) that has been bouncing around that chamber for about a month. The Enhanced Oversight of State and Local Economic Recovery Act, which was introduced by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), would help state and local governments fund Recovery Act oversight activities, such as audits, data collection and reporting responsibilities, and fraud and waste investigations. In particular, it allows state and local governments to set aside up to 0.5 percent of their Recovery Act money to fund these activities.

It seems that one of the themes running through the recovery effort is the (relatively) blazing speed of the Recovery Act as it passed through Congress versus the considerably slower pace of Recovery Act funds disbursement from Washington. Last week, the New York Times reported that only a "sliver" of the stimulus money has been distributed ($36.8 billion has been disbursed so far, according to the latest data from Recovery.gov), most of which was in the form of one-time Social Security checks, Medicaid supplements, and unemployment benefits. But while the rate and types of spending were prescribed by law -- $115 billion in spending was appropriated through the end of September of this year -- other factors are a slowing the rate of fund disbursal into the economy.

The Washington Post ran an article this morning about Recovery Act funding for environmental clean-up being given to contractors with less than stellar performance records. On the surface, this is yet another example of the desperate need for a fully public contractor misconduct database to help prevent awarding contracts to bad actors. But something else jumped out at me from the article that points to a larger problem that I don't think a misconduct database would solve: contractors and executive branch staff are far too cozy.