THE BLACK HOLE

'High-Risk' Finance at the Federal Level (Kelly Patricia O Meara. 9/02/03, Insight on the News)

The introduction to the General Accounting Office (GAO) "high-risk" list of federal agencies engaged in dubious accounting practices provided by Comptroller General of the United States David Walker reads in part: "The high-risk status reports are provided at the start of each new Congress. This update should help the Congress and the administration in carrying out their responsibilities, while improving government for the benefit of the American people." In other words, the purpose of the "high-risk" list is to provide helpful information to Congress about management of government agencies and departments.

But, even though the status reports are well into their second decade, one is hard-pressed to find in them detailed information that might in fact be useful to Congress in appropriating funds. Nowhere is this more evident than in financial management of the agencies and departments, about which this magazine has reported with care for nearly five years.

To provide a sense of how government bureaucrats are handling the people's money the GAO has provided an upbeat, yet sobering, breakdown. In 2001 there were 23 departments or agencies on the high-risk list. Two years later the number has increased to 25. The good news is that the Social Security Administration's (SSA) supplemental-security-income program and the Department of Justice's asset-forfeiture program have been removed from the list.

However, four new designations have been added, including the Department of Homeland Security, the disability programs at the SSA and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, federal real property and deteriorating facilities, and the Medicaid program. And, although it will come as no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with the problems plaguing corporate pensions, months after the official "high risk" was made public, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) was added to the list, raising the total yet another notch to 26. [...]

[W]alker again has raised the issue of the apparent inability of federal agencies properly and accurately to account for funds entrusted to them by taxpayers.

Apparent? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 28, 2003 12:21 PM