Holding government to a higher standard

July 12, 2010 by Keith Nathan 

Taxpayer-funded public salaries should be closely monitored

There are few things more aggravating than seeing tax dollars go to waste. The government expects its citizens to forfeit a generous part of their income, and an absurd amount of laws and regulations ensure that this occurs.

Those who do not pay their share are promptly charged and punished with hefty fines or imprisonment. This ensures that we are held accountable for our responsibility to fund the government’s activities. With this in mind, is it not appropriate for us to expect that the government will use the revenue it demands in a responsible, ethical and frugal manner?

A large part of our tax dollars fund the salaries of government employees, and these salaries have steadily increased over the years, well beyond the scope of inflation. An increase in the use of tax dollars should be followed by an increase in accountability, but this is not a reflection of reality. The de facto situation is that increased government revenue is coupled with more flagrant, irresponsible spending.

The most reprehensible abuse of our tax dollars is not necessarily misallocation, but the funding of government employees and agencies that fail to adequately perform their jobs.

This phenomenon has been especially noticeable recently, as major government agencies have been part of the cause of disasters such as the economic downturn and the BP oil spill.

The first of the aforementioned agencies is the Securities and Exchange Commission. With its regulatory functions and oversight of major investment and economic systems, the SEC has a significant influence on the balance of the economy.

Despite its potentially positive influence over the economy, its policies over the past two decades have done damage to capital gain for many businesses, and it completely failed to investigate and prevent the damage caused by the Bernie Madoff scandal. The SEC has played a significant role in the economic downturn, and some economic analysts have argued that the SEC is the primary culprit.

What’s maddening is that an investigation of the SEC turned up evidence of complete negligence by multiple SEC employees. These employees were found to have spent countless hours watching pornography while on the clock. One senior-level employee filled his computer with so much porn that he ran out of hard drive space and started burning it on CDs, which he kept in boxes around his desk. These employees made a mockery of taxpayers as they scarred our economy through negligence while receiving a generous salary of our tax dollars.

Another recent catastrophe, the BP oil spill, has roots in the negligence of another government agency: the Minerals Management Service. The MMS failed to properly inspect the BP oil rig and instead exempted the operation from proper environmental impact analysis and safety protocols. We are now reaping the benefits of this bungle, with devastation to most of the Gulf and a painfully slow cleanup.

Despite receiving large amounts of tax dollars while neglecting their crucial assignments, most of these agency employees “retire” or “resign,” only to collect the remainder of their undeserved benefits. This is an insult to those of us on the other side of the equation, who can be imprisoned for failing to pay into the system.

The solution is to severely punish negligence in government positions. If government employees cannot be accountable and responsible by their own volition, then we need to force it through punishment. Positions with higher pay and greater responsibility should have greater consequences for failure.

Fortunately, there is at least one organization that lives up to its fiscal responsibility in this manner. It is appropriate that the one government organization that runs by a code of honor and integrity is the one that implements this policy already: the U.S. military.

I think it’s time that we open the policy of punishing via imprisonment to other government agencies. With this policy in place, perhaps the next time a government employee considers watching porn instead of performing a crucial inspection, he’ll remember that he could wind up breaking rocks at Fort Leavenworth.