There was nothing funny about the 2010 General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas that featured a clown, a mind reader and an overall taxpayer price tag of $820,000.Opinions may differ on that statement; in fact, more than one 'segment' of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart has made comedic capital out of the GSA's spree. But it is undeniable that the United States has an enormous public debt* and that wasteful spending within the federal government only makes things worse.
— Rep. Mike Coffman and Rep. Jackie Speier, March 18, 2013
* Over $9 trillion according to the 2011 CIA World Factbook, under the definition of public debt as 'the total of all government borrowings less repayments that are denominated in a country's home currency." [Wikipedia]
***
THIS MONDAY, Reps. Jackie Speier and Mike Coffman wrote an op-ed for Politico to announce a Congressional Watchdog Caucus, which hopes to ease matters for federal employees and others who want to report misuses of funds and other problems within government.
For anyone who wants to report, the route is complex. There is more than one office (or, watchdog) which undertakes investigations and passes on preexisting records to those who request them.
A flowchart on the Caucus's website clearly lays out the possibilities for federal workers. Is the problem 'systemic' or 'isolated'? How long can you wait for an investigation? Depending on the answer, the person must turn to the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, the Inspectors-General, or the Government Accountability Office.
Once the whistle has been blown, the Office of Special Counsel is supposed to protect you against reprisals in the workplace, which it euphemistically calls "prohibited personnel practices." In a video on the OSC's website, past victims like Bill Zwicharowski mention gaslighting, firing and suspension, a bad employee evaluation, and coworker harassment. Unluckily the bad memories can't be retrieved, but at least one's career can.
The website links to institutions for government transparency which are useful for ordinary American civilians, too, like the Freedom of Information Act.
 |
| Official Portrait, Congressman Mike Coffman (R-CO) via Wikipedia |
REP. Speier is a Californian Democrat for whom gun control, gay rights and gender equality are favourite issues, judging from her Twitter account, in addition to her work on behalf of soldiers, while Rep. Coffman is a Colorado Republican who draws on his own experience in concentrating on veteran affairs. But they have found common ground before, for instance on the Violence Against Women Act (which was extended by the House of Representatives on February 28); and their concern about fiscal responsibility now points to a certain bipartisan neutrality even amid the fraught Washington atmosphere.
According to Rep. Speier,
"Oversight is all about responsible governance, not about scoring political points or shaming public officials. [. . .] Taxpayers rely on us to be good stewards of public funds. They can't afford wasteful expenditures and neither can the government."The initiative also reflects their common preoccupation with spending supervision as members of government oversight committees.
THE HOPE is that tens of billions of dollars could be saved, beginning with recommendations from Inspectors-General which have not been acted on yet.
In the past, notorious cases of wasteful spending on a large scale have even reached the mass media. For instance, during the early years of the Iraq War some $6.6 billion US went missing in Iraq after cargo airplanes flew in enormous wads of dollars at a time. Though Iraqis were blamed for much of the loss, an article in the Los Angeles Times notes, "[s]ome U.S. contractors were accused of siphoning off tens of millions in kickbacks and graft during the post-invasion period, especially in its chaotic early days."
Now Iraq is no longer an arena for loss so much as, for example, the stateside agriculture industry. As Reps. Speier and Coffman write in their op-ed,
Each year, the Department of Agriculture pays $5 billion to owners of farmland who once produced subsidized crops but no longer do.
The quiet work of Inspectors-General still seems to be yielding ample benefits. "The USDA OIG," the Government Accountability Office proudly (albeit in somewhat obscure language) reports of the Department of Agriculture's office, "had an estimated average return on investment for each budgetary resource dollar received of $13.96."
Illustration: "U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft delivers 6 pallets of humanitarian aid to the international airport in Tbilisi, Georgia, on August 19, 2008."
A few years earlier it might have been one of the C-130s which brought the ill-fated lucre to Iraq — "$2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills" could fit in one flight, according to Paul Richter's LAT article. Photo by Master Sgt. S. Wagers.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
***
WHETHER a Watchdog Caucus will bear fruit on the federal level or not remains to be seen. But when Rep. Speier was a state senator in California, she introduced legislation which, among other things, publicized the state auditor's Whistleblower Hotline. The hotline received "hundreds of tips," which helped uncover embezzlement at the UCLA's School of Medicine and at the state's Department of Transportation.
 |
| Official congressional portrait of Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA) via Wikipedia |
But whistleblowers do not only report financial abuses. When Rep. Speier had been elected to the federal House of Representatives, it was whistleblowers among the base's instructors who helped expose the military sexual abuse epidemic at Texas's Lackland Air Force Base. Rep. Coffman worked on addressing a dual budgeting and humanitarian scandal when it was reported in 2010 that Afghan soldiers were being atrociously starved, mistreated and neglected in Kabul's Dawood National Military Hospital. Some $180 million had been funnelled into the hospital, much of which was lost through corruption. Two American generals are accused of refusing to pass on reports of the abuses to their Administration out of career self-preservation; it was subordinate officers who turned to the Inspector-General of the Department of Defense.
***
"Watchdog caucus bolsters oversight" [Politico], by Rep. Jackie Speier and Rep. Mike Coffman (March 18, 2013) [Read March 19, 2013]
Congressional Watchdog Caucus
"OSC & Whistleblowing" [ITB OSC on YouTube] (Uploaded November 7, 2012)
"Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say" [Los Angeles Times], by Paul Richter (June 13, 2011) [Read March 23, 2013]
"USDA Office of Inspector General Resources, Accomplishments, Coverage, and Quality — GAO-13-245" [Government Accountability Office] (Mar 22, 2013) [Read March 23, 2013]
"Audit details state worker misdeeds" [Sacramento Bee, via California State University: Public Affairs], by John Hill (September 18, 2003) [Read March 23, 2013]
"Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Its Poor Internal Controls Allowed Facilities to Overpay Employees for Inmate Supervision" [Bureau of State Audits], November 2009 [Read March 23, 2013], p.11 of PDF
"Air Force base reports more sexual misconduct charges" [CNN], by Dugald McConnell (June 28, 2012) [Read March 23, 2013]
"Congress to hear allegations of failings at US funded Afghan hospital" [CNN], by Barbara Starr (July 24, 2012) [Read March 23, 2013]
Additional context came from a member of Rep. Speier's office who kindly helped clear up some questions I had sent.
Twitter links:
Congressional Watchdog Caucus: @WatchdogCaucus
Representative Jackie Speier: @RepSpeier
Representative Mike Coffman: @RepMikeCoffman
Government Accountability Office (GAO): @usgao
No comments:
Post a Comment