Posted on 10/19/2002 9:56:12 AM PDT by forest
As we reported back in 1999 (issue #134), the political quote of the decade comes from former economics professor turned politician, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R. TX): "I have identified three groups of people who have the privilege of taking and spending other people's money. They are children, thieves and politicians, and they all need more adult supervision."
Four and a half years later, nothing has changed.
"Public relations charades like 'Reinventing Government' cannot change the way Washington works," said Dick Armey (who, incidentally, has a Ph.D. in economics). And Armey was absolutely correct. Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" program did nothing to remedy any of the problems in government. In fact, it made things worse. On the other hand, the 'Government Performance and Results Act of 1993' (the Results Act) may have actually helped a little.
Under the Results Act, federal agencies are evaluated on 10 factors:
Most federal agencies, as was first reported, could not even answer numbers 1 and 2 properly. Some agencies set goals well beyond their statutory authority. For instance, EPA said it wanted to measure success as the number of acres grabbed up as wetlands. Other agencies set goals that defied common sense -- such as the Department of Agriculture's goal of resolving the Year 2000 computer problem (food stamps) by the year 2002. HUD said its mission included empowering people but, in that plan, they give up on those who were 30 years or older and who were not employed in the economy. And the Department of Labor proposed measuring its success by counting the number of people indicted.
Grading was from 0 to 100. The agencies ranged from GSA, with only a 14, to Transportation, which received a 71. The average of all federal departments and agencies was only 42.2 -- a failing grade. If these were school grades, only Transportation would have passed, and then just barely.
The federal government's books were so messed up that they received a "disclaimer" from the auditors. Which means, the books were so bad that the accountants could not make a determination about much of anything. For a public corporation, this would be disastrous. The company's stock would tumble, and most heads in the front office would roll.
That was 1998. Little has changed.
But, this is government. Hardly anyone cares how many billions of our tax dollars are lost. Worse, very few bureaucrats know or care.
Over the years, this little publication has reported this "news" but few in the major media ever picked up on it. And, those that did usually reported on only the Department of Defense, which has always had obvious problems.
The National Center for Policy Analysis(1) probably has one of the best running accounts of the problem over the years. They also point to some excellent in-depth reports, for anyone interested in real extent of the problem.
Nowadays there is a Republican administration. Which means, The New York Times suddenly decided to report on this ongoing problem.(2)
Quoting directly from the New York Times we learn:
"Year after year, auditors studying the financial records of federal government departments find many of them so disorganized, even chaotic, that the agencies cannot account for tens of billions of dollars. What is more, when many agencies realize that they have made major accounting errors, rather than looking back to see where the money went, they simply enter multibillion-dollar balance adjustments, writing off the money." . . .
"In the last year, the Office of Management and Budget has taken on the financial accounting problem in something like an auditor's holy war. In a letter to Congress on Oct. 7, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the budget office, said the federal government's accounts would 'never be tolerated in the private sector,' adding that 'repair of a system so badly broken will not happen overnight.'"
This is good reporting by the Times. Sort of. But, by their fifth paragraph, it gets very typical. The Times, of course, wants to harangue the Department of Defense, so they report:
"The Department of Defense routinely makes the largest financial blunders. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2000, auditors found, the department entered unsubstantiated balance adjustments totaling $1.1 trillion. That was an improvement over the previous year, when the figure was $2.3 trillion. 'They just made the adjustments up,' said a senior official with the Defense Department's inspector general's office."
In fairness, The Times did mention that there were also very serious bookkeeping problems in the Agriculture Department, NASA and the Agency for International Development. All had unauditable books. The Internal Revenue Service, too, of course.
According to The Times, "Treasury Department entered a balance deduction from the government's general fund of $17.3 billion to make up for financial errors throughout the government. The government also recorded at least $33 billion in erroneous payments last year, like improper Medicare payments of $12.1 billion."
Congress has passed many laws about accountability in government, but none have any teeth to them. Those in government who are negligent must be prosecuted and sent to prison. Else, this waste, fraud and abuse of public funds will never end.
Punish negligence and fraud. It's as simple as that.
1. http://www.ncpa.org/pd/budget/budget.htm
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/14/politics/14ACCO.html
Four and a half years later, nothing has changed.
The Results Act may have actually helped a little. Under the Results Act, federal agencies are evaluated on 10 factors.
If these were school grades, only Transportation would have passed, and then just barely. The federal government's books were so messed up that they received a "disclaimer" from the auditors. Which means, the books were so bad that the accountants could not make a determination about much of anything.
Agencies cannot account for tens of billions of dollars. What is more, when many agencies realize that they have made major accounting errors, rather than looking back to see where the money went, they simply enter multibillion-dollar balance adjustments, writing off the money. The Department of Defense entered unsubstantiated balance adjustments totaling $1.1 trillion.
Punish negligence and fraud. It's as simple as that.
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