The Inspector General Scandal That Wasn’t

If the federal government’s fleet of inspectors general had been doing their jobs, would DOGE…

freebeacon.com

By Scott Walter and Sarah Lee

If the federal government’s fleet of inspectors general had been doing their jobs, would DOGE even exist?

The question arises in the wake of President Donald Trump’s mass firing of 17 of these ostensibly independent, in-house investigators, 8 of whom are suing the administration for wrongful termination.

Every day brings new DOGE revelations of waste, whether it’s DOGE-meister Elon Musk asking why 150-year-olds are still getting Social Security checks, or Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), chair of the Senate’s DOGE Caucus, highlighting the U.S. Agency for International Development’s grants to Ukrainian fashion models and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (For more, see TheDogeFiles.org.)

What took so long?

We didn’t hear much about this gusher of wasteful spending, often ideologically driven, from the inspectors general who were just fired, but that hasn’t stopped a predictable chorus of woe. Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) wailed that “Trump wants no accountability for malfeasance,” while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) denounced a “chilling purge” by a new administration with a “lawless approach.” But Trump was clear during the campaign that he intended to clean up the inspector general system. He pledged to “make every Inspector General’s Office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State.”

The president only appoints about half of the federal government’s 74 IGs. The other half are appointed by agency heads—that is, by the very people who should be in the crosshairs of the IGs. And don’t forget Congress’s accountability for the mess, because IGs actually report both to their agency head and to Congress, and if you think members want honest appraisals of the federal programs they take credit for, I have a big, beautiful bridge to sell you…