Federal Budget & Tax

Federal Budget & Tax: News Blog Background

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Another chapter in the Lurita Doan investigation^* opens. In this latest installment of the Doan saga, Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Council, which appointed the special prosecutor to investigate Doan, is being scrutinized for shredding documents related to an investigation into his own misconduct. (Got all that?)

Wall Street Journal ($):

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer.

[...]

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call.

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

So the investigators are being investigated. It is, after all, par for the course for this scandal-plagued administration, so the administration should just go ahead now and appoint an investigator to investigate the investigator who's investigating Bloch (who's investigating Rove and friends)?

If you have a sub, the whole story is well worth reading for government oversight aficionados.

^*See our coverage:

March 7, GSA's Long War on Accountability

March 23, Continued Shenanigans at GSA Catches Waxman's Eye

March 26, GSA on Front Page, Again

March 28, GSA Administrator Can't Explain Politicization

May 23, More Bad News for Head of GSA

June 13, Doan Headlines at Three Ring Circus on Capitol Hill

August 9, The Forgotten GSA Scandal

Posted by Craig Jennings, 03:46:58 PM

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Heck of a Job FEMA

Last week, the Washington Post reported on more bad news coming out of FEMA. According to a Government Accountability Office report, FEMA has wasted over $30 million in contracts for housing (read: trailers) in the last year. Wow!

Here's some of the worst of it, from the Washington Post:

By not awarding work to contractors with the lowest bids, FEMA misspent $16 million, said the Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm. The agency misspent an additional $15 million on inspections that it could not prove were performed, preventive maintenance for which contractors falsified documents, and emergency repairs on trailers that FEMA did not own, the GAO said.

Come on...

Posted by Adam Hughes, 05:50:06 PM

Friday, November 16, 2007

Would You Do Business With Lawbreakers?

Interesting article in the Washington Post earlier this week about a new investigation that is starting to develop a bit of a stir in Washington. Seems there are thousands of health-care providers who owe billions of dollars in federal taxes, but who continue to be paid by the Medicaid program - the health-care program for the poor. This came to light after a Government Accountability Office report was delivered to Congress this Wednesday.

When I saw this, it reminded me of another GAO investigation I remember from earlier this year that found a similar problem with the Medicare program (see our coverage of that report from last March). What is similar between these two reports (aside from the tax cheaters) is that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) - the government agency responsible for implementing these two programs - claims there is nothing they can do about this.

To a certain extent, they might be right. Because of restrictions in law, CMS does not have explicit authority to deny health care providers from participating in either Medicare or Medicaid if they owe tax debts. In most cases, it would be illegal for the IRS to disclose those debts to the CMS - so they couldn't screen providers out anyway. The IRS can use a program called the Federal Payment Levy Program to satisfy tax debts by seizing some of the money paid to federal contractors, but Medicare officials have choosen not to participate in that program (this should probably change). But even that program won't help Medicaid. Medicaid payments are disbursed by various state agencies, and the IRS does not have a mechanism set up to automatically deduct money from those payments.

These are all valid points, but doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it. The Federal government should not be conducting business or making payments (either federal assistance or contract payments) to individuals or entities who owe taxes to the government. Period. Hopefully Congress will take some steps to clear up the obstacles preventing the IRS, CMS, and other government agencies from working together to streamline payments to health care providers so the government can collect the revenues that are due.

Posted by Adam Hughes, 02:46:08 PM

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Dems Backing Away From Transparency?

Remember when the Democrats came to power earlier this year and promised to end the culture of corruption in Washington? Then remember when they passed a fairly significant lobbying and ethics reform bill? Ok, then what is going on here - Roll Call: Earmarks in, Reforms out of Trans-HUD Measure

Roll Call reported today on some disturbing news - that the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) appropriations bill has include earmarks that have not been disclosed yet under earmark transparency rules. In total, 18 earmarks worth $24 million were included in the conference report for the bill. The House Rules Committee website claims the vast majority of these new earmarks are for relatively benign projects.

Yikes. Let's go through this. First off, who is deciding the relative benign-ness of these projects? Maybe Duke Cunningham thought the earmarks he was including as paybacks to companies who bribed him were "relatively benign" too? Wouldn't it be better to let everyone see them from the beginning and let an open process decide their benigninivity?

Second, if the vast majority are relatively benign, what are the ones that are not benign? Shouldn't those be excluded until they can be properly reviewed?

That's not even the worst of the news in the Roll Call article. The T-HUD bill also includes language that prohibits federal agencies from disclosing their "budget justification" documents to any committee in Congress other than the appropriations committees before the May 31 after the president's budget is released. I assume this would mean those agencies could not make these documents public either, as many of them do now. All this comes after OMB Watch joined with the National Taxpayers Union and 52 other organizations last year to strongly support the publication of these documents and we were ultimately successful as OMB agreed to voluntarily publish the budget justifications.

The fact that there are attempts moving forward to clamp down on access to this information is truly unfortunate. What happened to the cleanest, most open Congress in history?

Posted by Adam Hughes, 06:00:26 PM

Bush Attempts To Secure His Legacy

The Bush administration is up to some of its old tricks this week. After the Washington Post reported at the end of October of a movement within the administration to implement as much policy as possible through administrative functions rather than convincing Congress to adopt its policies, we are beginning to see some specific instances of their plan. In September, the White House issued new principles for agencies in conducting risk analysis that could impact agencies ability to protect the public. Then on Tuesday this week, Bush signed a new executive order (EO #13450) that attempts to "improve government program performance." Sounds like a good thing, no? let's look a bit deeper.

Dive into the Exec Order

Posted by Adam Hughes, 04:27:59 PM