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September 27th. Senator Childs from Washington This is a five minute, unrehearsed interview with US Senator Lawton Charles. And now the first question Senator and your news conference this afternoon you announce some ambitious plans for your new subcommittee on government procurement. Would you define the basic goal of these plans?

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The basic goal is to try to take the first step in reforming the budget process. Uh, it is the first step because there's more than the procurement measure that needs to be reformed. But 40 cents out of every tax dollar that we have goes to buying, uh, some kind of government services something to do in procurement.

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So no matter what spending ceiling you put or other controls you make, unless you're responsible for what you buy, unless you're getting your dollars worth that necessarily, you're not going to have control over your spending or you're not going to get something for your money. So that's the big thing to see that we get of dollars worth for the dollar.

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We're spending well. Can you tell us what this will mean in terms of total dollar savings based on the on the budget? Well, we're dealing with an area of $60 billion a year is spent in procurement. Now, if we could, so that's 40% of our budget.

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If we could affect a 5% savings, then we save $3 billion a year. If we could affect a 10% savings, uh, we'd be saving $6 billion a year, so there's all kinds of room. If you can just make a little change, you could affect a tremendous savings.

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Senator, I understand that this subcommittee is just getting ready to get off the ground. Well, what do you see is the first step in your plan of action for the subcommittee. Well, the first step is going to be to have some hearings on an Office of Central Control for procurement policies in all the history of government.

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The interesting thing is to find out there is no central agency that coordinates the $60 billion of purchasing we're doing. Each agency just goes off on their own and run their own show. A businessman goes crazy because in selling one product to to agencies, they might have completely different steps, completely different bid procedures in a completely different rigmarole that he has to go through.

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So first, we're going to try to put in a central office, make that office under the president and make it responsible for setting up some uniform policies and procedures for procurement. Will this office have to be established legislatively? Absolutely. Uh, to to have the kind of strength that it should have.

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Now, the president could do something like this on his own. Uh, but thus far, those leads really haven't been forthcoming. And for to have the strength that it should have, I think it has to be a statutory process. Senator, would you outline some of the other actions planned by the subcommittee other than the OEF P P?

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Well, we hope to get in the area of, uh, procurement, Let's say of of weapons in a better way of going into our our systems procurement or procurement of weapons, we've seen a tremendous cost overruns that we've had in our weapons. We have, uh, the F 14, and we have the C five A.

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And we have the B one bomber and all of these things that we find cost, uh, six times more than four times more than they were estimated. to cost. A lot of that is in the way that you go into that in the systems procurement to start with.

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We think there's a completely different way that the military should approach buying a weapon and their figures and what they're coming up with. And this is true, really not just in the military. It's true in h e W. It's true in other areas, so trying to do something in procurement that way would be a major feature.

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Another thing. Uh, the Office of Accounting General Office of Accounting is telling us that just to modernize a little statute in the defence procurement statute and bring it up to date where it hadn't been modernized since 1954 could save $100 million a year. Now that's a small item, maybe in $60 billion.

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But that's more money than the state of Florida used to spend in its appropriation for all of state services in the first year I went to the state Legislature, and all we really have to do is change a few words in the statute to effect cut some red tape in effect, a saving of $100 million They're all kind of areas across the board that we hope to be able to get into This way.

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I see. Senator, would you explain just what affect the work of your subcommittee and an effort to save money might ultimately have on the price of hamburger and bread back home? Uh, hopefully I'm excited about this because I think this gives us the best opportunity I know of to try to have some effect on prices because we could affect what you're getting for your dollar.

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And I'm more excited about this than anything I've gotten into a long time because it gives me a chance to try to do something that I think can be effective. Thank you, Senator. That's all the time we have today from Washington. This has been an interview with US Senator Lawton Child's mhm mhm