The Chamber of Commerce has commenced a well-financed and aggressive lobbying campaign to undermine America’s most effective whistleblower law, the False Claims Act. To justify its anti-whistleblower campaign the Chamber published a report entitled, “Fixing the False Claims Act: the Case For Compliance-Focused Reforms.” The purpose of this blog series is to combat the Chamber’s misinformation, and explain why the False Claims Act must be protected.
Fact Number 10:
Many of the “reforms” advocated by the Chamber of Commerce are predicated on promoting internal corporate compliance programs. The Chamber stated: “[Businesses] should be incentivized to maintain effective compliance programs.”
This justification for the “reforms” is unsupportable. First, all major federal contractors and publicly traded corporations are already required under federal law have effective internal corporate compliance programs. For federal contractors covered under the FCA, the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) mandate such programs.
Second, if there are problems with the FAR’s corporate compliance requirements, it is the FAR that should be amended.
Third, it is the existence of the FCA that provides companies with strong incentives to institute effective internal compliance programs.
All of the improvements for internal compliance programs suggested by the Chamber could and should be properly implemented as part of FAR rulemaking.
If the Chamber’s call for “reform” was not disingenuous, they would be working with their own members to fix their compliance programs, not lobbying Congress to undermine America’s “most important tool to uncover and punish fraud against the United States.“
Whistleblowers and their supporters are strongly urged to read this blog series and share it with friends. In addition, an Action Alert has been issued by the National Whistleblower Center so members of the public inform their representatives that the False Claims Act should not be “reformed” as proposed by the Chamber.
