[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 96 (Tuesday, July 16, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H4678-H4679]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ballenger). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that 
as we talk about corporate accountability, maybe it is an appropriate 
time to talk about government accountability. If corporations did what 
government has been doing, they would be chastised and probably sent to 
jail. Let us take this opportunity to start reviewing what government 
does in terms of accountability, in terms of honesty with the American 
people, who are really, the investors and stock-holders in government.
  The taxpayers of this Nation send their money to Washington and then, 
guess what happens? We do not do a very good job and we're not being 
honest with the public. There is a lot of hoodwinking. Let me give a 
few examples.
  The Social Security trust fund. Actually, there is no trust fund. It 
is an accounting gimmick where there are IOUs given to the Social 
Security Administration with the provision that

[[Page H4679]]

they cannot cash in those so-called IOU government bonds. It can only 
be an act of Congress. So we have, number one, fooled the American 
people with the words ``trust fund'' when it is really not a trust 
fund.
  Secondly, we have spent all that money on other government programs 
and written these nonredeemable IOUs. We have experienced under 
Secretary Rubin and the Clinton administration, and now in the Bush 
administration, when we reach the limit of allowable debt, well, it is 
disregarded. We have a law that says we cannot go deeper in debt in 
this country without the permission of the United States Congress, 
signed by the President. Yet we play games with it, with the 
disinvestment of retirement funds for civil servants. So when we exceed 
the debt limit, what happens is the Treasurer starts pretending that we 
are not writing those IOUs to the retirement funds for government 
employees. Some call it disinvestment. This is another area where it 
just would not be acceptable nor would it be legal if it were done in 
the private sector.
  The lockbox. The lockbox is another hoodwinking gimmick. It simply 
was an effort of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, to try to 
make people believe that there was some additional security to Social 
Security trust funds if we had the gimmick called a lockbox. But 
nothing changed. The IOUs were still written and the money was spent 
for some other purposes.
  Again, what I am trying to suggest is we take this opportunity to 
review what we are doing in the United States Congress and the Federal 
Government as a whole. In 1995, when the Republicans took the majority 
in this U.S. House of Representatives, one of the first things we did 
was to require an audit of all government departments and agencies. 
That initial audit came back and reported that, in most of these 
agencies and departments we cannot audit because their books are so 
bad. But what they had audited so far we found $100 billion that is 
unaccounted for in government assets, which is what government 
supposedly owns. The auditors could not find that $100 billion worth of 
property.
  The Government Performance and Results Act was another thing 
Republicans did when we came into the majority in 1995. And that 
required annual audits of all the departments and agencies. The 
auditors came back and said the books are so bad in so many of these 
departments and agencies that we are unable to give them an audit. 
These were supposed to be annual audits. Yet from 1995, 7 years later, 
there are still agencies and departments that do not have their books 
in order in such a way that they can actually be audited.
  We play games in our appropriation process. We come up with a budget 
resolution that, since I have been here for the last 9\1/2\ years, that 
budget has never been adhered to. And frankly, Mr. Speaker, I am upset 
that while we get on our pompous soap boxes here and criticize the 
corporate world, that needs criticizing and they need to go to jail, 
and they need to go to real jail, not some kind of country club jail 
for white-shirt crimes, we should also be looking inward at our own 
accounting practices and the way we handle taxpayers' money.
  302(b)'s. This is a provision where, after we pass the budget, we 
send it to the appropriators and the appropriators come up with how 
they are going to divide that allotted money between the several 
appropriation bills. But what has been happening, and what I suspect is 
going to happen this year, is we turn out the early appropriation 
bills, and we add extra money to those bills so it is attractive to 
everybody. And then the final bills that come out, that are very 
popular, whether it is veterans or military or education, they say, 
look, we do not have any more money under the budget and we end up 
overspending.
  Let me just conclude by saying we need to have a lot better 
accountability to the investors in the United States Government; that 
is the taxpayers' money. Let us take this opportunity to review, renew, 
and do a much better job of the way we handle this business of 
government and taxpayers' money.

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