Watching the Watchdog: Gov't Accountability Office Issued Only Two of Six Bimonthly Reports Required By 2009 Recovery Act in 2012 [Updated]

    When Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, one of the provisions to ensure transparency instructed the Government Accountability Office to issue bimonthly reports on the use of funds authorized in the Recovery Act and to make those reports available on the internet.  However, after fairly consistent reports in the first year, the regularity of the reports began to wane, and in 2012, only two such reports were posted on the Recovery.gov website.  Rather than bimonthly review reports at 60-day intervals, the average report interval has been more than 90 days, more than 50% longer than the statutory requirement.

    One section of the Recovery website is titled GAO Findings.  A note at the top of the page says:

 The Recovery Act requires the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the use of Recovery funds by states and localities every two months. Its reports are below[.]

    Indeed, all the reports issued since the inception of the program are available on the site.  The summaries of the first three reports in 2009 each make reference to a "bimonthly report."  After that, the term is dropped and only makes one more appearance in the December 2010 report which refers to "previous bimonthly and recipient reporting reviews."  However, in both the highlights and full version of even the most recent report (October 2012,) the bimonthly requirement is mentioned.

    With that in mind, here are the issue dates of the reports listed on Recovery.gov:

1. April 28, 2009
2. July 8, 2009
3. September 23, 2009
4. November 19, 2009
5. December 10, 2009
6. March 3, 2010
7. May 26, 2010
8. September 20, 2010
9. December 15, 2010
10. April 7, 2011
11. June 29, 2011 
12. June 29, 2011 (two reports issued on same day)
13. September 22, 2011
14. December 16, 2011
15. June 18, 2012
16. October 15, 2012

    If bimonthly reports had been issued on a strict schedule, there would have been 23 reports at about 61 day intervals as opposed to 15 reports at an average interval of 92 days (not counting the two reports issued on the same day).  Days between reports for the last two (2012) were 185 days and 119 days.  As of January 20, 2013, another 97 days have passed since the most recent report.

    Interestingly, the GAO does not dispute this finding, although a slight discrepancy exists. In a speech on November 16, 2012, in Beijing, China, Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, made the following statement concerning the reviews and reporting by the GAO:

Since 2009, GAO has issued 17 bimonthly review reports and one more is underway.  And we have issued more than 100 other reports and testimonies on Recovery Act funding.  These proactive efforts continue to yield very positive results. GAO’s Recovery Act efforts have helped ensure accountability, counter fraud, and promote transparency over where the money went and the results it achieved.  

    Although Dodaro stated "17 bimonthly review reports" have been issued, only 16 are listed on the GOA website as was stated above. In either case, despite the "bimonthly" claim, the reports have averaged around 90 days, or quarterly, not bimonthly, and the total is six or seven short of the 23 called for by the legislation.  Here is the relative text from the legislation spelling out the reporting responsibilities of the GAO.  There do not appear to be any caveats or exceptions to the bimonthly requirement:

TITLE IX--LEGISLATIVE BRANCH
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
......
GENERAL PROVISIONS--THIS TITLE
Sec. 901. Government Accountability Office Reviews and Reports. (a) Reviews and Reports-
(1) IN GENERAL- The Comptroller General shall conduct bimonthly reviews and prepare reports on such reviews on the use by selected States and localities of funds made available in this Act. Such reports, along with any audits conducted by the Comptroller General of such funds, shall be posted on the Internet and linked to the website established under this Act by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.

    In a year when the agency has only issued two of six required reports, it is curious to say the least that the head of the GAO continued to refer to the Recovery Act reports as "bimonthly." This misstatement alone is cause for concern about the level of transparency at the government's largest watchdog agency.

    Although the GAO works for Congress, the Obama administration is widely recognized as having ownership of the Recovery Act. Though Congress bears some responsibility for being asleep at the switch, with the GAO's reporting in 2012 occurring at only one-third of the level Congress mandated for the trillion-dollar Recovery Act, the Obama administration's pledge to run the "most open and transparent administration in history" could certainly be called into question as well.

UPDATE: I received a response from Chuck Young, Managing Director of Public Affairs for the GAO in which he stated that the "Recovery Act requires bi-monthly reviews but does not require bi-monthly reporting."

Saving Taxpayer Dollars: Specks and Logs

    In mid-December, the White House announced the four finalists in President Obama's fourth annual SAVE Award competition for federal employees.

Since its creation in 2009, President Obama’s SAVE Award [Securing Americans Value and Efficiency] has served as a vehicle for Federal employees to offer firsthand their ideas on how to improve performance and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.  

Today, we are announcing the four finalists for the 2012 SAVE Award.  Keeping with tradition, the winner will present his or her idea to the President in the Oval Office, and other proposals will be directed to agencies for potential action or inclusion in the President’s Budget.

The final four ideas are:

Frederick Winter, Shift to Senior Transit Fares.  Frederick Winter of the Department of Education proposes that all Federal employees who receive public transit benefits shift from regular transit fare to the reduced senior fare as soon as they are eligible.  In the D.C. area, this change would lower the cost of the employee’s travel by 50 percent, with no loss in the effective benefits for the employee. 

Angela Leroux, Reduce Employee Shuttle Buses.  Many Federal agencies maintain buses to shuttle employees from one government office to another for work purposes.  Too often these vehicles sit idle or travel their routes with just a few passengers.  Angela Leroux at the Internal Revenue Service recommends that agencies eliminate or consolidate the bus service and encourage the use of conference and video calls, or provide metro cards to those with a need to travel. 

James Szender, Use Digital Transcription.  A written transcript of Federal meetings or hearings is often required.  James Szender of the Department of Interior proposes, whenever possible, using digital equipment for transcripts instead of hiring a court reporter, since using digital transcription is significantly less expensive than contracting with a certified court reporter to attend, record, and transcribe the proceedings. 

Laurie Dempsey, Post Customs Inspection Information Online.  Customs and Border Protection is required to post a bulletin weekly that lists all imported items that have completed the customs inspection process.  Currently, Customs ports across the country print this bulletin, which can be hundreds of pages long, and post it in the customs house.  Laurie Dempsey from the Department of Homeland Security suggests instead posting the bulletin electronically on CBP.gov.  This change would save paper, reduce costs, and make it easier for the public to find out what items have been inspected without having to visit the facility in person. 

    To summarize these cream of the crop, top of the heap, head and shoulders above the rest ideas for saving the hard-earned money of the taxpayers: Don’t pay more than required for a transit pass, stop running buses no one rides, stop using 18th century transcription methods, and... use the Internet.

    These ideas are certainly worthy to be implemented, and this is not intended as a slight against the four individuals listed above who have called attention to this waste. What's disturbing is that it took a contest in President Obama's fourth year in office to smoke them out.  Seriously: post customs bulletins on the internet instead of hundreds of sheets of paper on a bulletin board in the customs house?  Didn't Joe Biden already uncover this one in the Campaign to Cut Waste? What other nonsensical, money-wasting boondoggles continue to lurk below the surface?  Could federal workers be hoarding them, hoping to enter them in next year's contest? (Just kidding.)

    And where are the REAL money-saving ideas? Like stop paying farmers billions to keep food prices higher.  Stop spending billions to have the federal government via the Department of Education interfere in local education systems.  Stop spending billions to boost unnecessary "green energy" initiatives whose time, based on the market, has not yet come.  Stop spending trillions to (unsuccessfully) "eliminate poverty" while instead often exacerbating the problem.

    There's a Biblical principle in Luke 6:41-42 that, though not a perfect fit, has an application here:

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. [ESV]

     The specks are important, and let's not overlook them.  But what we really need to do is start working on the logs.

Governmental Creep

     While the title of this post might suggest to some that I have certain elected officials in mind, I'm actually using "creep" in the sense of "spreading" - like a fungus or a rash.  The point I am trying to make is that even a good and useful function of government can devolve into a boondoogle if left unchecked, and "unchecked" seems to be the default these days.

    With that premise, consider the following.  When the word "disaster" comes to mind, the photos from the recent Hurricane Sandy certain seem to fit the bill:

Source: http://www.examiner.com/

    More specifically, when we think of a "drought disaster," we might think of this:

    Or this:

    But when the folks at the USDA of the United States federal government think "drought disaster", they see this:

    Nearly 2,200 of the 3,000 or so counties in the United States have "Drought Disaster Incidents" as of 11/7/12.  More than 70% of the United States is a disaster area. Now I am not belittling the seriousness of the dry conditions in some places in our country.  There is doubtless suffering and need.  But is it any wonder we have 47,000,000 on food stamps and over 14,000,000 on social security disability?
Is it any wonder that unless contraceptives are freely available to all (and when I say "freely", I mean "plentifully and at no cost whatsoever",) we have a "health care crisis" on our hands?

    This governmental tendency towards hyperbole results in policies that are costly and intrusive, but in addition it masks the true crises: the national debt, for one. But according to economists like Paul Krugman, the debt is nothing compared to the crisis we'd create by cutting government spending now.  How about the Social Security/Medicare crisis of impending bankruptcy?  No, we must fulfill the social contract lest our politicians (mostly Republican ones) begin shoving aging citizens over cliffs.

    The attraction is that faux crises are so much easier to "solve" than real ones.  Just a little more of someone else's money and we can "help" whoever needs it more.  But unless we can face the hard truth that sometimes someone will fall and the federal government won't necessarily be there to catch him before he hits the ground, we will soon all be on the ground getting tangled up in what is left of the rotting strands of a "safety net" that is no longer catching anyone.