A recent audit found that Medicare may have made up to $454 million in improper payments to providers for 38.7 million Covid tests.
In another case, a multiagency investigation found that a former U.S. Air Force employee and the owners of government contracting firms conspired in a bribery scheme that spanned more than a decade and involved more than $400 million in government contracts. The investigation led to six criminal convictions, more than $88 million recovered for the government and more than 34 years of jail time for the defendants.
IG oversight has collectively resulted in potential savings of about $93.1 billion in FY 2023.
A 2023 report revealed that the Small Business Administration had decided to stop collecting on certain delinquent loans — totaling roughly $62 billion. After the report was issued and congressional Republicans “blasted the [Biden] administration for its leniency,” the SBA reversed course and announced plans to pursue those deadbeat loans aggressively, and could recover as much as $30 billion for American taxpayers.
The reports mentioned above represent just a handful of the times inspectors general, the independent watchdogs inside the various agencies of the federal government, have either called out fraud or waste or saved the American people money. IGs have also improved the federal government’s performance on a wide variety of critical issues, from combating violent gangs to preventing veterans’ suicides, from uncovering cyberfraud to fighting cyberstalking, from overseeing U.S. aid to Ukraine to evaluating the evacuation from Afghanistan, from exposing border corruption to analyzing bank failures.
That’s why President Donald Trump’s decision to fire 18 inspectors general in the first week of his term is so puzzling. According to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, IG oversight has collectively resulted in potential savings of about $93.1 billion in FY 2023. With the OIG community’s aggregate FY 2023 budget of approximately $3.5 billion, these potential savings represent an approximate $26 return on every dollar invested in inspectors general.
IGs should be a natural ally in the president’s effort to make the government more efficient; “Efficiency” is literally in our name. IGs ultimately share a mission with the rest of the executive branch, which is to improve the federal government for the American people. And the IGs’ track record makes clear that IG oversight is a good investment for the American taxpayer.
Even if it’s true, as some have argued that the White House fired me along with my IG colleagues because the president does not want independent oversight into the executive branch, here’s why President Trump should want independence for his inspectors general.
If IGs are not independent — if they can’t make findings of waste, fraud, abuse or misconduct about government programs, without fear of being fired, disciplined or reprimanded and can’t be objective in their assessments of government programs — then their oversight will be worthless.
The programs that President Trump cares about most are precisely the ones in which he should want the straight scoop.
To use a business analogy, President Trump would likely avoid investing in a company whose auditors were hopelessly conflicted, and he wouldn’t trust the financial audit of the company’s balance sheet or cash flow statement if the auditor would have gotten fired for anything other than a clean opinion. Surely, he wouldn’t trust a bond rating if the rating officials would have been fired or reprimanded for anything other than a AAA rating.
Similarly, who would believe any findings of any office of inspector general if IGs can be removed for any negative findings? The programs that President Trump cares about most are precisely the ones in which he should want the straight scoop.
This is not a hypothetical. In 2022, when I was inspector general of the U.S. Interior Department, my office found that the department’s Bureau of Land Management, which administers oil and gas leasing programs on federal land, was failing to conduct a necessary step to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the leasing program. BLM was awarding leases for the mineral extraction, including oil and gas, without confirming whether the entities and individuals were prohibited from doing business with the federal government. After our report, BLM began immediately checking the list of prohibited entities before issuing those leases. That is a great example of government oversight at its best.
Here’s the catch: I don’t know that such a report could be issued today. There’s reason to believe that a negative report on a sensitive program, regardless of how true it is or how helpful it is to the American taxpayer, would be viewed as disloyal and cause for termination.
The chilling effect on IGs seems already to be occurring. Paul Martin, who served as inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired last month, the day after releasing a report that cautioned that the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid, as well as its efforts to cut USAID’s staffing, made it harder to ensure billions in U.S. funding were being spent properly. Roughly two weeks later, The Washington Post reported that his successor, the acting IG at USAID, had been accused of holding “two critical reports on the consequences of President Donald Trump’s funding freeze on crucial services in Africa and the Middle East, amid fears of retaliation from the White House.”
That is the polar opposite of what President Trump should want. He should want to know if there are problems in the federal government, so he can fix them for the American people. IG reports are a tremendous tool to do just that, but only if the IGs are empowered to call it like they see it, without the proverbial sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
President Trump is famously adamant about loyalty. Well, it’s not loyal to bury bad news. To the contrary, allowing decision-makers to waltz down the primrose path, unwittingly blind to the realities on the ground, is the ultimate in disloyalty. Sharing the truth, even if it is not what the principal wants, is the ultimate show of loyalty.
