Democrats: Ignored IG Advice Could Have Saved $25 Billion
http://www.truthout.org/010809D
Washington - Some congressional Democrats claim that the Bush
administration could have saved more than $25 billion since 2001 if
it
had implemented nearly 14,000 cost-saving measures that its own
watchdogs recommended.
The recommendations came from inspectors general in various
federal agencies. By law, federal agencies are supposed to act on
inspector general reports within a year.
The findings are in a report prepared by Democrats on the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It also said that in
addition to saving taxpayers' money, many of the recommendations
would
have improved public health and safety, national and homeland
security
and the environment.
The committee asked the inspectors general to compile all the
recommendations they'd made between Jan. 1, 2001, and the end of last
year. The total was nearly 100,000, with 14 percent of them
unimplemented.
"If someone told me that I was losing change from a hole in my
pocket and instead of mending it I kept losing money, shame on me,"
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement. "But that's what
has happened . . . to the tune of $25 billion, as thousands of
inspectors general recommendations were ignored by our government."
She and Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edolphus
Towns of New York had asked the committee to look at the
unimplemented
recommendations.
Waxman was the chairman of the committee at the time. Towns is
the
new chairman. McCaskill serves on a similar panel in the Senate, the
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The House committee's ranking Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa of
California, chided the Democrats for conducting the study without any
Republican input.
In a statement, Issa also said that the report ignored the
Democrats' "own backyard" because it didn't look at inspectors
general
recommendations made during the Clinton administration.
Issa's spokesman, Frederick Hill, said there could be good
reasons
that some recommendations had been delayed, but "anytime the IG says
there's a problem, it's important that Congress should take it
seriously."
The report indicated that putting in place the open IG
recommendations for just the Social Security Administration and the
Department of Health and Human Services would save more than $16
billion.
Another $3 billion could be saved from the unimplemented
recommendations by the inspectors generals of the Transportation and
Defense departments.
A specific recommendation in 2007 was for the Defense Department
to identify overpayments to certain military contractors, which could
save $837 million over five years, according to the report.
The Amtrak inspector general said in 2005 that the agency could
save $100 million annually by using a more modern system of
maintenance.
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