CAGW's Waste Wire; Rounding Up The Latest News Items On Government Waste

10/18/2002

From: Sean Rushton or Mark Carpenter, 202-467-5300, both of Citizens Against Government Waste http://www.cagw.org WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 -- The Waste Wire is a bi-monthly compendium from Citizens Against Government Waste of the costly ways in which government spends public money. -- Agencies consistently give top job performance ratings to 85 percent of career executives even though numerous federal programs fall short of meeting their strategic goals. The performance ratings usually influence the distribution of bonuses and other incentives. According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), about half of senior executives receive bonuses each year, and the size of those bonuses increased from $10,200 in 1999 to $12,300 in 2001. A recent Government Accounting Office (GAO) report looked at approaches used by four agencies to link individual performance to goal achievement and found that they made some difference. The OPM plans to scrutinize performance ratings and bonuses for 2002, which ended Oct. 1. -- Washington Post (10/1) The stopgap funding solution to the budget mess leaves most federal agencies with no firm idea of how much money they will have to spend over the next fiscal year. Operating on a week-to-week or month-to-month budget will impair agency performance and could lead to layoffs, say both Republicans and Democrats. --Washington Post (10/2) A federal trade panel approved duties as high as 369 percent on imports of steel wire rods, a move that will shelter American mills but will provoke angry protests from companies that use the rods to make wire. --New York Times (10/3) The Postal Service held letters addressed to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. When officials from the Justice Department came to rip them open, the Postal Service called the Customs Service, which said nobody could get a warrant to open the letters without probable cause. The letters proceeded to Afghanistan. Congress reacted by changing the rules, so that from now on Osama's mail and packages can be opened. -- US News & World Report (10/7) The House Appropriations VA-HUD Subcommittee approved its fiscal 2003 spending bill by providing more funding for veterans' medical care than President Bush requested, while gutting AmeriCorps and other federally administered volunteer programs which Bush strongly backs. --Congressional Quarterly (10/7) Congress's failure to pass a budget means that tens of billions of dollars in long-awaited federal funds to beef up homeland security - including money for emergency training and equipment - will not be available until next summer. -- USA Today (10/7) Congress is spending $100 million on research to explore alternative mind-body healing techniques. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) helped establish the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine after he claimed to use bee pollen to relieve his allergies. Soon after his conversion experience, the Federal Trade Commission fined the distributor of the bee pollen $200,000 for false advertising. -- Washington Times (10/7) A coalition of liberals and conservatives delayed a House vote on the $3.6 billion Army Corps of Engineers appropriation due to flagrant waste, mismanagement, and environmental abuse. Leadership had attempted to renege on pledges to allow amendments and a full debate of the corps. The Corp's projects have been widely criticized for their economic and environmental deficiencies, from such groups as the National Academy of Sciences, the Pentagon's inspector general, the General Accounting Office (and CAGW). -- Washington Times (10/8) Congress neared completion of the $10.5 billion Military Construction spending bill, which is about $800 million over the president's budget request. -- Congressional Quarterly (10/8) The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) costs taxpayers millions of dollars annually because of its inability to identify and deport illegal immigrants being held in federal, state and local prisons, a Justice Department audit said. The audit said the INS "has not effectively managed" the Institutional Removal Program (IRP), which was created in 1988 as an effort to deport criminal aliens as soon as they served their prison terms. -- Washington Times (10/8) Navy personnel used government credit cards to hire prostitutes, buy jewelry, gamble, and attend New York Yankees and L.A. Lakers games in fraudulent purchases exceeding $200,000, congressional investigators have found. -- Associated Press (10/8) White House budget chief Mitch Daniels said President Bush wants to use supplemental spending bills to fund any military strike on Iraq to avoid permanently embedding new spending into the federal budget's baseline going forward. -- Dow Jones (10/9) According to experts, the visa-application forms of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists should have been denied under then-existing law (the other four applications could not be obtained). Six separate experts who analyzed the simple, two-page forms came to the same conclusion: All the visa applications they reviewed should have been denied on their face, but were instead approved by the Department of State. -- Joel Mowbray, National Review (10/9) A top aid to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is proposing cuts in major weapons programs including the Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter and its $4 billion Stryker combat vehicle. The recommendation is part of Pentagon official Stephen Cambone's plan to trim more than $10 billion from the 2004-2009 defense budgets. The Army is fighting the proposal. -- Reuters (10/14) Some members of Congress and security experts are calling for a new U.S. domestic intelligence agency devoted solely to identifying enemy spies and saboteurs in the United States. Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, are behind the idea. -- Congressional Quarterly (10/15) A single measure could derail an omnibus resources bill that so far includes the text of 139 bills. Rules Committee member Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, raised objections to a measure that would direct the government to transfer interest from the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund to cover the health care costs of retired coal miners and their families. Pryce's objection will likely prevent the bill from being considered under suspension of the House's rules. -- Congressional Quarterly (10/15) Congress is weighing a three-year extension of the existing welfare program, with an added $100 million a year to promote marriage. -- New York Times (10/15) The Treasury Department recommended that Congress impose higher taxes on companies that seek to reduce extraneous tax burdens by creating headquarters in foreign countries, like Bermuda. -- Congressional Quarterly (10/16) Divided within its own ranks, House Republicans shelved an investor tax cut and unemployment extension that GOP leaders had been touting as an answer to Democratic election-year criticism on the economy. -- Associated Press (10/16) Congress passed an election reform bill that provides almost $4 billion to replace old voting machines, train poll workers, and combat fraud. President Bush will sign it into law, but it will not take effect in time for the election next month. -- CBS (10/16) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered a review of whether the U.S. Operations Command should be stripped of its weapons-buying authority so that it can focus solely on its war-fighting role of supporting global clandestine missions to capture or kill Al Qaeda terrorists. -- Washington Times (10/17) Congress approved the largest defense spending increase since the Reagan years with a $355 billion appropriation for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. That's $34.4 billion over last year's level. -- Wall Street Journal (10/17) In a move that prioritizes reelection campaigning above the most basic duty of Congress, the House voted 228 to 172 in favor of a continuing resolution, effectively postponing action on 11 of 13 appropriations bills until after the election. -- Washington Post (10/17) The Navy's unprecedented effort to update its entire computer system has run into major problems. The $6.9 billion Navy-Marine Corps undertaking was supposed to create an internal web site capable of carrying a broad range of information. The project is a year behind schedule and some in Congress are concerned it won't stay within its budget. The Navy discovered ten times the number of software applications it expected on its old computers which has slowed down the overhaul. Hundreds of the applications can't be moved to the new system, meaning that many workers have two computers on their desk. Shadowing the project are problems associated with its two contractors: EDS is undergoing an informal Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry, and WorldCom declared the largest bankruptcy in history. -- Washington Post (10/17) Tobacco Settlement Update: Who is gaining from the states' $200 billion settlement with the tobacco industry? The list grows longer every week. In North Carolina, politicians gave $200,000 to a place that holds horse riding competitions. A county golf course in New York got almost a million dollars; $200,000 for golf carts alone. And lawyers are winning big, too. Dickie Scruggs, Senator Trent Lott's brother-in-law, is said to be getting more than $800 million. Maryland Attorney Peter Angelos, who was already rich enough to own the Baltimore Orioles, is getting another $150 million. Tobacco producers are also getting a share of the money to compensate for the lower demand for their crops. North Carolina has now spent $42 million of its share of the tobacco settlement on the tobacco industry, including a tobacco auction house and a museum of tobacco farming. -- ABC's John Stossel (10/17) A flood of new regulations and edicts is swamping the already-overworked staff of trial lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and extra budget money isn't likely to help. Following last year's revelations of corporate fraud, the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs faulted the SEC for faulty oversight and called for sweeping reforms, adding new emphasis on filing charges quickly and detecting fraud as it occurs. At the same time, Congress is demanding that the SEC write a ton of new regulations to support the new Sarbanese-Oxly Act, a task that pulls lawyers off their enforcement duties. Some important cases are faltering or lying dormant altogether. -- US News & World Report (10/21) The Immigration and Naturalization Service granted citizenship to a key figure in the alleged terrorist cell broken up in Portland earlier this month. In fact, Ali Khaled Steitiye had four felony convictions that the INS not only knew about but tried unsuccessfully to use to have him deported in 1998. -- US News & World Report (10/21) CAGW is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse in government.