WHO AUDITS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S SPENDING?
WHO AUDITS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S SPENDING?
ACCORDING TO a recent op ed piece by Comptroller General and GAO head David Walker, it appears nobody does - at least not much. The GAO has found grander things to do with it time and it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone else that the world's largest fiscal operation - the US government - might need the same sort of oversight as, say, Fannie Mae or Enron. To celebrate its emancipation from the boring business of auditing the government's books, the GAO has even changed its name from Government Accounting Office to Government Accountability Office.
Here is how Walker explains it: "In fairness, GAO did primarily scrutinize government vouchers and receipts in its early years. The days of accountants in green eyeshades, however, are long gone. Although GAO does serve as the lead auditor of the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements, financial audits are only about 15 percent of GAO’s current workload. Most of the agency’s work involves program evaluations, policy analyses, and legal opinions and decisions on a broad range of government programs and activities both at home and abroad. The scope of GAO’s work today includes virtually everything the federal government is doing or thinking about doing anywhere in the world.
For example, GAO staff have been in Iraq recently, looking at everything from military logistics to contracting costs to the U.N.’s oil-for-food program. GAO has become a modern, multidisciplinary professional services organization whose 3,200 employees include economists, social scientists, engineers, attorneys, actuaries, and computer experts as well as specialists in areas from health care to homeland security. Today, most GAO blue-cover reports go beyond the question of whether federal funds are being spent appropriately to ask whether federal programs and policies are meeting their objectives and the needs of society."
Which is a worthy enterprise but the latter only supplements and doesn't replace the need for the former. If you don't believe your tax dollars are being misspent on a massive scale at places like the Pentagon and HUD, check with one of those groups like the Project on Government Oversight that tries to do the work the GAO has now decided is beneath it.
POGO, for example, has a government contactor misconduct database which currently has 641 items on it. Looking on the bright side, POGO found 18 contractors for whom there were no charges of misconduct. It sounds like it might be time to bring back the era of accountants with green eye shades.
POGO http://www.pogo.org
POGO CONTRACTOR MISCONDUCT DATABASE
http://www.pogo.org/db/found.cfm
ACCORDING TO a recent op ed piece by Comptroller General and GAO head David Walker, it appears nobody does - at least not much. The GAO has found grander things to do with it time and it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone else that the world's largest fiscal operation - the US government - might need the same sort of oversight as, say, Fannie Mae or Enron. To celebrate its emancipation from the boring business of auditing the government's books, the GAO has even changed its name from Government Accounting Office to Government Accountability Office.
Here is how Walker explains it: "In fairness, GAO did primarily scrutinize government vouchers and receipts in its early years. The days of accountants in green eyeshades, however, are long gone. Although GAO does serve as the lead auditor of the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statements, financial audits are only about 15 percent of GAO’s current workload. Most of the agency’s work involves program evaluations, policy analyses, and legal opinions and decisions on a broad range of government programs and activities both at home and abroad. The scope of GAO’s work today includes virtually everything the federal government is doing or thinking about doing anywhere in the world.
For example, GAO staff have been in Iraq recently, looking at everything from military logistics to contracting costs to the U.N.’s oil-for-food program. GAO has become a modern, multidisciplinary professional services organization whose 3,200 employees include economists, social scientists, engineers, attorneys, actuaries, and computer experts as well as specialists in areas from health care to homeland security. Today, most GAO blue-cover reports go beyond the question of whether federal funds are being spent appropriately to ask whether federal programs and policies are meeting their objectives and the needs of society."
Which is a worthy enterprise but the latter only supplements and doesn't replace the need for the former. If you don't believe your tax dollars are being misspent on a massive scale at places like the Pentagon and HUD, check with one of those groups like the Project on Government Oversight that tries to do the work the GAO has now decided is beneath it.
POGO, for example, has a government contactor misconduct database which currently has 641 items on it. Looking on the bright side, POGO found 18 contractors for whom there were no charges of misconduct. It sounds like it might be time to bring back the era of accountants with green eye shades.
POGO http://www.pogo.org
POGO CONTRACTOR MISCONDUCT DATABASE
http://www.pogo.org/db/found.cfm
posted by T. Scott Brineman at 8:33 AM
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