In the United States Government system, Inspectors General play an important role. They are intended to be independent, and help to assure openness of the government operations. Not only is that openness intended to improve efficiency and prevent corruption, but it should also prevent the incumbent party from improperly using the resources of the bureaucracy to strengthen the party itself.
The Inspector General of the Department of State has come under scrutiny of the Congress. CNN reports:
During a hearing Wednesday morning, Krongard first denied that his brother had any role with Blackwater -- but reversed himself after being confronted with evidence that his brother had attended a Blackwater advisory board meeting this week.....The huge budget for the war and related efforts in Iraq, and the difficult conditions created by that war, are especially of concern. According to U.S. Politics Today:
Howard Krongard already was under scrutiny by the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, led by California Democrat Henry Waxman.
Waxman said Krongard's oversight of construction of the nearly $600 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, was conducted with "reckless incompetence," and that he refused to pursue allegations of fraud and labor trafficking by contractor First Kuwaiti.
The House Armed Services Committee reported this week (early October 2007) that $6 billion in government contracts connected with U.S. involvement in Iraq are under active criminal investigation and another $88 billion are under criminal review.This is but one aspect of what appears to be a pattern. US News and World Report says:
As if that weren't bad enough, of the $30 billion Congress voted for Iraqi reconstruction, more than $8 billion is just plain unaccounted for. Add all that to the 190,000 weapons that seem to be missing from the military's Iraq inventory---a problem that General Patraeus chalks up to an "clerical error."....
Meanwhile, over at the State Department, seven employees who work for the Inspector General there have accused him not only of failing to do his job but of actively blocking their efforts to do theirs.
Tasked with routing out waste, fraud, and corruption within the federal government, inspectors general in about a dozen different agencies have now fallen under investigation themselves. Former and current federal employees allege that the watchdogs—many of whom are presidential appointees—lack independence from the Bush administration and interfere with investigations. In other cases, inspectors general say they have been intimidated by top agency officials.From a February 2007 article in BushGreenwatch:
Last fall, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney testified before Congress that "simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior." New revelations about the relationship between two high-ranking administration officials add new meaning to Devaney's charge.In 2004, the Congress released a report on the Bush administration's politicization of the corps of Inspectors General. I quote:
Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the Justice Department's top environmental attorney and a former political appointee at the Interior Department, recently resigned after disclosing her long-term relationship with J. Steven Griles—the Interior Department's former deputy secretary whose ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff are the subject of a criminal investigation. Wooldridge played a lead role in responding to earlier ethics investigations of Griles, at times even helping deflect allegations against him.
At the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, this report examines the backgrounds of the 43 IGs appointed under the Inspector General Act by Presidents Bush and Clinton over the last 12 years. It finds that IG appointments have become increasingly politicized during the administration of President Bush. Whereas President Clinton typically appointed nonpartisan career public servants as IGs, President Bush has repeatedly chosen individuals with Republican political backgrounds. Over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Bush had prior political experience, such as service in a Republican White House or on a Republican congressional staff, while fewer than 20% had prior audit experience. In contrast, over 60% of the IGs appointed by President Clinton had prior audit experience, while fewer than 25% had prior political experience.Rolling Stone puts the case more vividly:
Judging from their résumés — deputy counsel to the Bush-Cheney transition team, special assistant to Trent Lott, senior counsel to Fred Thompson, daughter to Chief Justice William Rehnquist — Bush's appointees seem more qualified to be partisans at a neoconservative think tank than America's last line of defense against fraud and abuse......Especially egregious, according to the Washington Post, in October
Even worse, inspectors have often been hand-selected by the very Cabinet heads they are supposed to oversee — a practice that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a lonely Republican voice for executive accountability, blasts as "directly contrary to the spirit of the law." As a result, the administration often treats inspectors more like employees than independent auditors. "Cabinet secretaries expect their inspectors general to be members of the 'team,' rather than watchdogs who call things as they see them," says Clark Kent Ervin, who came under fire as Bush's first inspector general in Homeland Security for exposing weaknesses in airport security.
The Bush administration yesterday lodged a veto threat against a House bill that would strengthen the independence of the government's inspectors general.Comment: When the government is not open, and the citizens can not adequately monitor the performance of the bureaucracy, how long can we expect that government to serve the public interest rather than the interests of those in power? Undermining the corps of Inspectors General may be one of the most insidious effects of the Bush administration's approach to governing. JAD
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), would provide inspectors general with seven-year terms, let them submit budget requests directly to Congress and permit the White House to fire them only for cause.
In a policy statement, the Bush administration said it strongly opposes provisions in the bill that would allow inspectors general "to circumvent the president's longstanding, and constitutionally based, control over executive branch budget requests."
The White House also strongly objected to the bill's provision that specifies reasons for dismissing an inspector general, calling it an "intrusion on the president's removal authority."
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