Yesterday, the enviably independent U.S. Government Accountability Office released its latest High-Risk Series, and the numbers suggest fiscal irresponsiblity in Washington remains in a bull market.
According to Citizens Against Goverment Waste, the report
identified 27 high-risk areas in 2007, compared to 25 areas in 2005 and 14 areas in 1990, the first year such reports were issued. The GAO added three areas to the high-risk list: financing of transportation, protection of national security technologies, and oversight of food safety. Since 1990, 18 areas have been removed from the high-risk list. The report identifies varying levels of progress across many areas, such as Medicaid and real property management, "although not yet enough progress to remove these areas from the list."
One area of concern, notes the CAGW, relates to transportation, where there is
"the absence of a link between federal grant funding levels and specific performance-related goals and outcomes, resulting in little assurance that federal funding is being channeled to the nation's most critical mobility needs." One reason for this poor outcome, not mentioned by GAO, could be congressional pork-barrel projects like the $223 million Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.
Despite the fact that some areas no longer fare as poorly as before, it is not necessarily a reason for optimism. Says the group:
"Unfortunately, the programs taken off of GAO's high-risk list are too often replaced by others. The fact that Department of Defense programs dominate the list is especially alarming. These management inadequacies require sustained attention from agency heads and Congress," concluded [CAGW President Tom] Schatz.
In some cases, of course, it is no longer a question of being at risk, but of being fully exposed. In "U.S. Agency Finds New Waste and Fraud in Iraqi Rebuilding Projects," the International Herald Tribune reports on a developing story of alleged misuse of government funds.
A federal oversight agency reported Wednesday that despite nearly $108 billion that had been budgeted for the reconstruction of Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the country's electrical output and oil production were still below prewar levels and stocks of gasoline and kerosene had plummeted to their lowest levels in at least two years.
The United States alone has accounted for nearly $38 billion of the rebuilding money, according to the agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
Even as the flow of reconstruction money from the United States is coming to an end, the litany of major American contractors that are suspected of having wasted large amounts of the money has lengthened, new investigations by the inspector general have found.
One of the reports released on Wednesday found that an American company, DynCorp, appeared to act almost independently of its contracting officers at the Department of State at times, billing the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and starting other jobs before they were requested.
According to Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., who oversees the inspector general's office, his agency
had 80 active investigations of potential criminal activity in Iraq. Some 23 cases have been handed over to the Justice Department, "and they are making progress on those," he said.
The latest reports by Bowen's office appear to show that it is not for lack of money that the performance of Iraq's basic infrastructure has fallen to disastrous levels in some cases; if anything, the rebuilding program seems to have been given more money than it has been able to use to any effect.
More money than sense: your government at work.
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