Issue 521 The Auditing Office February 5, 2015

This is one of my own concepts that I have been developing overtime.  The goal was to simplify government with respect to monitoring where and how funds are spent.  So this issue is a re-hash of that idea, and my attempt to improve upon the concept.  Let us begin.

What it is supposed to do:

1) All auditing functions in the federal government become centralized in this one agency under the treasury department.  It eliminates the need for Presidents and the Senate to appoint and confirm auditors for each individual department which saves time and money.  As such, only two people would need to be confirmed, the leader and deputy of this new agency, with everyone else being hired out for the job by them or similar department.

2)  As part of the auditing process, these men and women of the Auditing office would pick and choose projects and agencies at their leisure.  This is meant to insure that each agency is completely unprepared for such an audit and thus forces them to keep their accounts and successes recorded on a daily basis in order to comply at a moment’s notice.  Overall, this ensures transparency and saves money.  (There will also be a method of punishment if they do not comply, save freezing pay, funds, or halting promotions, and transferring people out of the non-compliant agency or office).

3) The Auditing office would have the power to shut down programs they deem superfluous, redundant or wasteful if they do not meet a set criteria.  That criteria will be set by Congress and approved by the President, but if the Congress and or the President fail to perform such, the auditing office will do create their own.  The Auditing office can even shut down or reorganize or merge entire agencies, departments or programs as they see fit without approval of any other government body.   To ensure there is no corruption involved, or that the merger, or removal of program or agency is good, the Auditing office will have three teams evaluate the merits based on the evidence suggested.  Team A will look for reasons to abolish, or merge, while team B will try to refute team A's reasoning and justify the continued existence of a program or agency.  Team C will have the job of evaluating both team A and B's findings and arguments with them making the final decision.

4)  Within this Auditing office will be the Human Resources department.  It will conduct all the hiring, firing, promotions and transfers of the entire federal government.  In this department, they will evaluate each individual worker in the federal government to see their skill set, productivity, ability to work with others, and other performance factors to determine if they are worth keeping, or if they can be reassigned to a place they can be even more useful.

5) Another office in the Auditing office would be the Internal Office.  Here this office will perform the same tasks as listed in numbers one through four, but in this case applying it to the auditing office.  Basically it acts like internet affairs.

Possibilities of other powers:  

1) The office can audit elected representatives to look for corruption.

2) Any money saved from mergers, or elimination of programs, departments or agencies will be collected by this office, used to pay for their functions to keep them financially independent of the Congress (thus avoiding corruption and obscurity) save the Internal Office to keep egos in check.  Any money left over from expenses will be used to pay off the national debt.

3) The office can reduce funds going to a program, department or agency if there is a surplus going to said program department or agency and then use it to fund a different program, department or agency that is deemed worthwhile, but is considered underfunded.

4) The office will look for other methods and technologies to make the government as financially efficient and work efficient as possible.  As such they will also have the means of proposing methods of adoption (if those methods require financial funding) to Congress.  If said methods do not require financial support, then the Auditing office, after approval from the internal office may implement the method or technology in any way they deem fit.

Conclusion:  Overall, the idea is to simplify government, and make it cost efficient.  Congress seems inept at this, and we may not want to give such powers to the President.  So where do we turn, an independent panel or group we call experts.  As such, this is my proposal for an Auditing office.