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Charitable Contributions for September 11: Protecting against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Prepared Statement of The Honorable Billy Tauzin
Thank
you, Chairman Greenwood, for holding this very timely hearing today.
This public forum will allow charitable organizations, law enforcement
authorities, other charity experts, and Members to explore several important
issues surrounding the massive outpouring of contributions arising from the
September 11 attacks -- issues that are meaningful to the tens of thousands of
Americans who have sought to help victims of these attacks.
It also provides us an opportunity simply to appreciate this heartwarming
generosity of the American public. Think
about it. Since September 11,
American's have given more than 1.2 billion dollars -- 1.2 billion dollars --
to charitable organizations working on relief and recovery efforts related to
the attacks. This dwarfs the
contributions following any previous disaster. As
others have mentioned, this is more than 25 times what was generously provided
the victims following Oklahoma City, more than 10 times what was donated in the
wake of Hurricane Andrew. And these
figures do not account for the many, many ways Americans are otherwise giving
unselfishly of their time and effort to lend support to the victims' families.
Of
course, the immense and sudden outpouring of donations to relief efforts also
creates an immense logistical problem. Today
I hope we can examine, and perhaps ease, many of the concerns related to making
certain the money goes where people intended it to go.
What
mechanisms, for example, are being created to assure that funds directed to
relief and recovery are distributed as efficiently as possible?
How are charities keeping track of victims to assure nobody in need of
assistance is missed? There
is no doubt that the charitable organizations at the heart of this influx of
donations are providing valuable and very necessary services.
Yet questions have been raised about the disbursement of funds,
particularly by the charitable organizations that have many other, non-related
projects to fund. So how can
Americans be sure the money they send to a general relief organization is
distributed as they intended it to be? Finally,
sad to say, there's the ever-present temptation for fraud in these
circumstances. One responsibility of the members of this Committee is to help
head off scam artists in the marketplace who prey on American's best
intentions with their own evil designs. I
look forward to our discussion today about measures that guard against deception
and scams. What do people need to
know to avoid the high-tech fraud that seems so easy to pull off these days?
What are the law enforcement authorities doing to protect against this
and other types of charity fraud? Some
of the questions and discussion today will touch on areas troubling to donors.
Yet this hearing should be seen, in the end, as an effort to strengthen
our trust in the charities that are doing so much to help Americans express
their wonderful spirit of giving. Again,
I thank you Mr. Greenwood for holding this hearing.
I look forward to an open discussion with the witnesses that appear
before us today."
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