February 20, 2009

Smelling A RAT

NR's loss is the Examiner's gain. Byron York exposes "the far-reaching — and potentially dangerous — provision that no one knows about" in the stimulus bill. As usual, one need only imagine the howling fury from the left had the Bush administration attempted anything close to this. It smells of a stealth power grab. The Democrats would presume to assign themselves new powers over federal inspectors general.

The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.

Let me get this right..."in the name of accountability and transparency" they will exert political influence over a process designed to be free of it. You can't say they don't have balls. Transparency-wise though, this provision falls a bit short. Its authorship is still a mystery, and only a few congressmen even know of it.

I suppose it's what you'll get when you pass 1000-page bills without reading them.

Posted by dan at February 20, 2009 2:55 PM