Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding today’s hearing on the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2011.
This is an important law that has helped countless numbers of victims since it was originally signed into law in 2000. The law provides resources across the country and throughout the world to trafficking victims, advocates, law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and for many other services.
I believe that federal resources should be provided to programs that combat trafficking. There is, however, an unfortunate reality that we must face. We live in dramatically different times today than we did in 2003, 2005, and 2008 when the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was previously reauthorized.
Today, 14 million Americans are unemployed. That’s over 9 percent unemployment. An additional 8.8 million Americans are underemployed. These unemployment numbers continue month after month and the national deficit keeps growing and growing. The federal government must drastically reduce its spending and bring the fiscal house in order.
During these difficult economic times, we simply can’t continue to allocate as many resources as we have in the past. And we certainly can’t continue to allocate resources without verifying that taxpayers’ dollars are being used as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Now, that doesn’t mean we do away with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Instead, it means that as we in this committee look to reauthorize this legislation, we need to take a hard look at every single taxpayer dollar expended, determine how those dollars are being used, and determine if the stated purpose of each program is being met.
For example, given this fiscal climate, there is no reason we should reauthorize funding for the State Department to host official receptions at the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. In past trafficking bills, they received thousands of dollars a year for these receptions. We can no longer afford luxuries like this and funding must go to programs that help victims, not diplomatic parties.
The American taxpayers expect us to scrutinize funding in every law we are reauthorizing and this hearing affords us that opportunity.
So, how do we address this issue?
To start, we need a legitimate, rigorous evaluation of programs funded under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to ensure that inefficient grantees or less than scrupulous grantees are prohibited from getting funds. That can be done by identifying and eliminating poor and underperforming grantees.
I know that Senator Coburn has done a great deal of work on this issue. He has investigated the shortcomings, mismanagement, and waste in several programs funded by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. I appreciate the hard work that Senator Coburn and his staff have done and look forward to working with him on this issue going forward.
Additionally, there are a number of audits and reviews conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Department of Justice Inspector General on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. These audits reveal mismanagement, failed oversight, and waste of taxpayer dollars in implementing programs to help trafficking victims.
For example, the Inspector General found in a 2008 review that there were “systemic weaknesses in [the Office of Justice Programs] grant implementation.” The Inspector General found weaknesses in the areas of the “established goals and accomplishments for grantees, grant reporting, fund drawdowns, local matching funds, expenditures, indirect costs, and monitoring of subrecipients.”
Further, the Inspector General found that while the Department of Justice built significant capacities to serve victims, they “have not identified and served significant numbers of victims.”
Unfortunately, it was more of the same when we looked at audits conducted of individual grant recipients awarded funding under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. In seven separate audits of individual grantees dating from 2007-2010, the Inspector General found hundreds of thousands of dollars in questioned costs, unauthorized expenditures, failed matching requirements, and many other problems. It is really disheartening to see that every single audit of a trafficking grantee found problems.
It begs the question, what is the Department of Justice doing with taxpayer dollars? Do they view it as Monopoly money that can be handed out with no accountability? Given the current fiscal situation, these audits are simply amazing. The Department of Justice has some serious explaining to do, because between these audits and the ones I reviewed as part of a hearing held back in July on Violence Against Women grants, it appears they continuously award grants to entities that can’t manage the money appropriately.
We have a duty on this committee to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. From the audits on this program, and many others administered by the Department of Justice, it appears that isn’t being done.
Holding grant programs accountable will help to ensure that services really go to those in need. Before we reauthorize another dollar, we need strong oversight language included in legislation—to ensure that failing grantees will not be rewarded with additional taxpayer dollars—and to ensure that government officials will be held accountable for these repeated failures to oversee grants.
We are well past the time when we can reauthorize programs without giving them the scrutiny needed to ensure that the people we are trying to help, the victims of trafficking, are getting the services they need. If we allow grants to be mismanaged, a victim who could have been helped goes without.
We must do everything in our power to help victims of trafficking, but we also must protect taxpayer dollars. I look forward to hearing the testimony from the witnesses and working with members of the Judiciary Committee on finding the right approach.
Thank you.