of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, which cut red tape out of the federal procurement system and prioritized the purchase of commercial products over government-unique designs. He teamed with Senator John McCain to write the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act, which virtually eliminated cost overruns on major defense purchases for a period of several years after its enactment. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations/Financial Oversight For 15 years, from 1999 to 2014, Senator Levin served in leadership positions on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. During his tenure the senator led investigations into such matters as money laundering, offshore tax abuse, and corporate misconduct. Highlights from his money laundering investigations included exposing money laundering via Citibank private bank accounts serving the wealthy and corrupt including Mexico's Raúl Salinas de Gortari and Gabon's late President Omar Bongo; correspondent accounts opened for high-risk offshore banks moving suspect funds; embassy and personal accounts opened for foreign leaders like Chile's Augusto Pinochet and Equatorial Guinea's dictator Teodoro Obiang; and accounts at a major global bank, HSBC, misused by Mexican drug traffickers, Russian fraudsters, and rogue regimes like Iran. Levin also led tax investigations that attracted international attention for exposing tax misconduct by wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. Highlights included investigations that exposed abusive tax shelters designed and marketed by accounting firms like KPMG; a 13-year network of 58 offshore trusts and corporations established and used by wealthy Texas brothers, Sam and Charles Wyly, to evade paying their fair share; Swiss banks like UBS and Credit Suisse that helped U.S. tax cheats hide assets; and complex corporate tax schemes that enabled Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Caterpillar to avoid paying millions, even billions in taxes. His inquiries into corporate misconduct were equally famous. Levin's highlights here included exposing Enron's use of accounting deceptions, financial gimmicks, and executive pay schemes leading to its collapse into bankruptcy; unfair credit card practices that loaded up average U.S. families with debt; JPMorgan Chase's $6 billion loss from hidden, reckless derivative trades by the so-called London Whale; and risky investments by the United States' largest banks to profit from physical commodities like oil, natural gas, aluminum, and electricity at the expense of American businesses and families. Education Levin was a strong supporter of the creation of the Department of Education. Over the years, Levin introduced legislation and amendments to improve education, including an amendment that greatly reduced class sizes to help teachers