Posted on 08/20/2009 11:54:21 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Republicans this week pronounced Barack Obama’s six-month-old $787bn (€553bn, £477bn) stimulus a failure.
But Earl Devaney, the former secret service agent who heads Mr Obama’s stimulus monitoring board, says critics do not yet have the tools to judge accurately.
Mr Devaney, who meets weekly with Joe Biden, the vice-president, to monitor the outflow of stimulus money, is scrambling to set up the most complex government website in history by the October 10 deadline imposed by Congress.
He predicts that the site, which will enable journalists and citizens to monitor every dollar that comes out of Washington and match it with what is, or is not, happening in their neighbourhoods, will transform the way US citizens interact with government. “After getting a taste of this, people will not want to go back to the old ways,” he says.
There is a sense in the White House, too, that the genie of transparency will stay out of the bottle – with all the attendant grief that could bring when users of the site begin to slice and dice every dollar spent.
“I think it becomes the gold standard,” says Ed DeSeve, senior advisor to Mr Biden on the recovery programme, who points to the speed, as well as thoroughness, of the system. “It used to be that if you got information out 60 days after the end of the fiscal year you were a hero.”
Mr Devaney’s outfit is charged with detecting and pursuing waste and fraud in the thousands of “shovel-ready” projects funded by the stimulus.
Only about 15 per cent has been paid out so far. By the end of 2010, almost three-quarters will have been disbursed.
Mr DeSeve, meanwhile, claims that the stimulus has proven itself already – and will win more converts with a sudden rush of money due soon. The question now, he acknowledges, is how far it can support the beleaguered job market.
“I think you will see the debate move from ‘is it working?’ to ‘what are we seeing in terms of jobs growth along the way?’ ”
The website may quell Republican criticism. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, attacked the stimulus as “extremely difficult to track”.
“The website will unleash a million citizen IGs [inspectors-general],” says Mr Devaney.
“If, say, there is a bridge built in Pittsburgh and the contractor is the brother-in-law of the mayor, then the people of Pittsburgh are in a much better position to detect that than I would be.”
The GAO report that was published last month found there were some weaknesses in “the level of accountability needed to effectively respond to Recovery Act risks”, but also noted that states were complaining they lacked the manpower to meet the strict reporting requirements. Mr Devaney insists all the data will be available on time.
Mr Devaney’s team, known as RAT – the Recovery and Transparency Accountability board – has no political brief. A bear of a man who had been on the verge of retirement, Mr Devaney was taken by surprise when Mr Obama offered him the job in February.
“I asked how long he would give me to decide,” says Mr Devaney. “And the president said: ‘Ten minutes.’ Ten minutes later, we were in front of the cameras.” The only piece of advice Mr Obama passed on to his new “stimulus tsar” was: “I don’t like my IGs to smile.”
Having worked for 40 years for the federal government, Mr Devaney conveys scepticism about what bureaucrats get up to with public money.
“You would be surprised at some of the things I have seen,” he said.
Once the millions of data entries have been made – from the billions allocated to the greening of federal buildings to the $5,000 repainting job on the local school – Mr Devaney expects the allegations to pour in.
His powers include the ability to subpoena officials. “I have already had subpoenas drafted,” he says. “I just don’t know yet who I’m going to hand them out to.”
Mr DeSeve says he is confident that well-established auditing procedures for local government spending make stimulus money a less attractive target for fraudsters than the similarly large $700bn troubled asset relief programme, which bailed out the banks.
Nontheless, he says: “Something is going to happen along the way where someone will do something inappropriate with the funds. We will make sure that those people are punished.”
Since users will be able to track money down to their postcode, RAT is anticipating a torrent of allegations within the first 24 hours.
“You can easily imagine it: the website tells you X amount of money has been spent on this new school and you look out of the window and can see nothing has happened,” says Mr Devaney.
“There are a lot of eyeballs following this money. Spending doesn’t get much more political.”
The Rats have to put a nanny state twist on EVERYTHING it seems. Even on Porkulus transparency. I guess they can’t grok the idea of simply shaming misbehavior by exposing it to sunlight.
Uh when was this imposed by Congress? You say stimulus bill. Oh that’s the one they passed without anyone knowing what was in it.
The biggest spy and nanny website produced and with our grandhildren and great grandchildrens money no less.
I can see a lot of Congress critters going to jail including the POTUS and Co since they are doing most of the stealing.
Getting the citizens used to snitching before the commie takeover.
s/b “Inspectors general”
(just showing off.....)
More correctly, the "czars" are "commissars", political enforcers. The commissars' mandate from The Obammunist is to enforce the party line. They take their orders from the head of the party and answer only to him.
This particular commissar is deputizing a million apparatchiks (colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the party) and threatening them in advance with prepared summons. Sound familiar?
In communist countries everything is illegal (no rule of law). The state arrests you when they need to.
yitbos
I wonder if the multi-million government site will be any better than this one:
http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/
I can go to the county that I live in now and see what projects have been funded by the porkulus.
This particular commissar is deputizing a million apparatchiks (colloquial term for a full-time, professional functionary of the party) and threatening them in advance with prepared summons. Sound familiar?
The "stimulus" is going to bankrupt us anyway... so in the mean time, it should be entertaining to watch the Jack Abramoff wannabes get skewered by this "czar". LOL!
What a howler this is.
” Even on Porkulus transparency.”
But they can’t tell the citizens just who got the trillions in bailout money to the foreign banks and companies.
The deal is this: the national socialist commissar is going down into the city, school district, county organizations to enforce party politics.
These local apparatchiks/Stazi will have access to national socialists to report anyone not toeing the party line.
It has nothing to do with the stimulus.
yitbos
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