The Center for Public Integrity

Established in response to the chaos of the 2000 election, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), by many accounts, has been ineffective thus far in smoothing out the nation’s voting problems. The commission, created as part of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), is an “independent, bipartisan commission” tasked with “developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, and serving as a national clearinghouse of information about election administration,” as well as accrediting testing laboratories and certifying voting systems.

Former President Ronald Reagan called the right to vote “the crown jewel of American liberties,” but after the controversial 2000 election, Democrats and Republicans agreed major legislation was needed to address serious problems in the election system. The EAC got off to a stumbling start, chronically short of funds – receiving only $1.2 million of $10 million authorized in 2004 – and unable to secure office space for its first two years. Subsequently, the commission came under significant criticism — including multiple reprimands from the Government Accountability Office — for its failure to establish and maintain a clearinghouse of information on how state and local governments implemented guidelines and operated voting systems. The EAC admitted it was “resource constrained” in its ability to ensure voting systems “perform securely and reliably.”

The Bush Administration’s regulatory approach to toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants was struck down by a federal court that concluded the government flouted health law in a manner reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The National Academies’ National Research Council has found that some 60,000 newborns a year are at risk for neurological problems such as impaired motor function due to mercury—the largest source of which is coal-fired power plants. The Food and Drug Administration urges pregnant women to limit fish intake due to widespread contamination with mercury that made its way into the food chain. In its waning days, the Clinton administration listed mercury as a toxic substance subject to strict regulation as a health threat, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under President Bush, proposed a rule to reclassify mercury from coal-fired plants under a different section of the Clean Air Act (CAA). The EPA’s rule would have set an overall limit on mercury, while giving coal plants flexibility to meet the goal or purchase “emissions rights” from other plants—known as a “cap-and-trade” program.

For many injured veterans — aging former soldiers as well as younger ones recently back from Iraq and Afghanistan — disability claims are a vital and necessary source of income. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), however, has long failed to process claims in a timely manner, forcing many vets to wait an average of six months for their claim to be processed, and as long as two years to wait for an appeal. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported a growing backlog of claims and lengthy processing times in 2001, and the problem has persisted. By February 2007, the backlog had grown to almost 400,000 — more than 130,000 of which had exceeded the VA’s 160-day goal to process a claim. This is due in part to the growing number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan filing disability claims — total claims have jumped from about 579,000 in 2000 to some 806,000 in 2006, a 39 percent increase. The Senate unanimously passed a measure in 2007 to provide the VA with $70.3 million to eliminate the backlog of disability claims by hiring new processors and implementing better staff training. But increasing the number of processors on staff did not immediately solve the crisis. The GAO says that increased numbers must be paired with “adequate training and performance management” in order to issue timely and accurate decisions. Daniel Akaka, Democrat of Hawaii and chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, has called for better technology, improved employee training, and an enhanced claims process to end the long delays. Until the problems are fixed, the persistent delays mean that tens of thousands of veterans and their families will continue to struggle financially.

Over the course of the Bush administration, the Department of the Interior (DOI) has been hit with troubling — and repeated — reports of politically inappropriate activity at the agency. The litany of concerns prompted Earl Devaney, the department’s inspector general (IG), to claim that “short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.” In one controversial 2002 episode, political appointee Anne Klee helped negotiate the proposed purchase of mineral rights — estimated by the Minerals Management Service to be worth $68 million — from the powerful Collier family, which at one time owned 1.25 million acres of Florida land. According to IG Devaney, department officials including Klee were in constant conflict with career agency staff members and provided “incomplete” information in order to arrange a tentative sale price of $120 million, plus up to $350 million in tax breaks for the sellers; the deal eventually fell apart. In 2004, Interior Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles was cleared of ethics violation charges, but in 2007, he pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the U.S. Senate about his connections with infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff, to whom he provided “advice and intervention on issues within DOI,” according to prosecutors; Griles was sentenced to ten months in prison. A second official from the department received two years probation and a fine for failing to report gifts from Abramoff while working as an overseer for the Northern Marina Islands, which retained Abramoff as a lobbyist. Also in 2007, the deputy assistant secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Julie MacDonald, admitted to leaking internal documents — in violation of federal regulations — about endangered species to pro-industry groups, including the Chevron Corporation and the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation.

Tax avoidance is an old trick, but under the Bush administration, weak enforcement and a spate of new tax credits and loopholes have led to an extended tax holiday for big business. Though the basic corporate tax rate is 35 percent, according to the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, the average tax rate paid among the 275 largest U.S. corporations is closer to 17 percent — lower than that of most individual citizens. Tax avoidance tactics abound, including funneling U.S. profits to tax-free subsidiaries overseas and using previous years’ losses (from up to 20 years ago) to write down a firm’s annual taxable profits. Lower levels of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits targeting large corporations have compounded the problem. While corporate tax payments accounted for 23 percent of all federal tax revenue in 1960, by 2007 that figure had dropped to just 14 percent. In fact, as the Government Accountability Office reported in a controversial 2008 study, nearly 60 percent of U.S. companies doing business in the United States paid no federal income taxes for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.

Revelations that Southwest Airlines flew thousands of flights in violation of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directives brought to light a “relaxed culture” of oversight that investigators later termed “symptomatic of much deeper problems.” When the airline industry and the FAA agreed in the 1990s to work together on safety, their new joint programs depended on “the integrity of the people using them,” the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) told Congress in April 2008. But separate probes by the OIG, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee found alarming evidence that the necessary integrity was often missing, and that relationships between airlines and FAA inspectors were often far too cozy. In the case of Southwest Airlines, investigators eventually concluded that 46 of its aircraft flew more than 60,000 flights in violation of FAA directives before officially notifying the agency — and then even flew another 1,451 miles after notification. When Southwest voluntarily notified the FAA that its fleet had fuselage problems on March 15, 2007, the responsible FAA supervisor failed to ground the aircraft for the next eight days. Two FAA whistleblowers told congressional investigators of a close relationship between the supervisor and Southwest’s compliance manager. One whistleblower, FAA inspector Douglas E. Peters, alleged that the supervisor allowed Southwest to continue flying for two weeks after the agency discovered a problem with rudders on Southwest planes. An oversight committee report further asserted that FAA took no follow-up action to ensure that Southwest aircraft had been brought into compliance with federal law until the agency learned of the congressional investigations nearly eight months later.

When the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted in 2002, it was hailed as a bipartisan victory for education reform, promising student proficiency in math and science by 2014 — but funding issues and controversial measurement systems have hindered its success. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, about 70 percent of schools are making adequate yearly progress, and national math achievement among tested students has improved since 2000. Certain areas, however, have not seen similar progress, such as reading achievement among 8th graders and graduation rates among minority students. The NCLB makes states accountable for holding their schools and students to exacting standards, and schools that fail to meet those standards for two consecutive years must undergo federally-mandated restructuring. While the basic premise of NCLB — to provide quality education to all children — is well accepted, it has suffered, in the view of many, from inadequate funding. In 2006, Democrats criticized the Bush administration for underfunding NCLB by more than $40 billion since 2001, and noted that the FY 2007 budget allocated only half the promised funding to assist disadvantaged students. The Department of Education’s inability to track and allocate funds, moreover, has made it difficult to provide necessary resources to schools most in need of assistance, according to the Government Accountability Office. Budgetary issues aside, stipulations in the law have made it difficult for some to implement the program. States are required to follow strict guidelines and success is measured by standardized tests, but critics say the law doesn’t allow for differing demographics or students’ varying abilities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) laissez-faire attitude toward regulation of investment banks is widely believed to have contributed to the depth of the current economic crisis. That the SEC was asleep at the switch was on clear display in March, when its chairman, Christopher Cox, declared he felt “a good deal of comfort” about investment banks’ capital cushions. Just three days later, Bear Stearns collapsed and was bought by JP Morgan Chase in a hastily arranged deal backed by $29 billion in taxpayer funds. The sale of Bear Stearns, one of the first rumbles in the financial earthquake, was presaged by a 2004 SEC decision that loosened capital rules and allowed brokerage units to take on greater debt. Since then, investment firms’ debt-to-assets ratios have risen — in Bear Stearns’ case, to as high as 33 to 1. Simultaneously in 2004, the SEC began outsourcing risk monitoring responsibilities to the banks themselves, while assigning only seven staffers to oversee the five largest investment houses, which controlled more than $4 trillion in assets. Despite the companies’ vanishing cushion against investment losses, the SEC did nothing in the case of Bear Stearns to address the bank’s issues of heightened risk. As an SEC inspector general’s report put it in September, it is “undisputable” that the SEC “failed to carry out its mission” in that case. The public has ended up footing much of the bill.

In a busy Baghdad square, a disturbance between a group of Americans and Iraqis on September 16, 2007 resulted in the shooting death of 17 Iraqi civilians. The Americans involved were not military; they were private security contractors from a company called Blackwater. To date security contractors in Iraq number around 48,000 from various companies. Similarly, jobs such as cooking and cleaning on military bases — positions that in past wars were largely filled by military or government personnel — are increasingly outsourced to private companies. The number of private contractors, as well as the amount of money the government pays them, has risen considerably as the Iraq war has gone on, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s 2007 report, Windfalls of War II. The result has been less coordination in missions involving both military and private groups, such as U.K.-based Erinys, and U.S.-based Blackwater and KBR. The problem was highlighted in 2004, when insurgents ambushed a KBR truck convoy and drivers refused to work until security was improved. Without the deliveries, the military was left without adequate fuel, water, and ammunition. A complicating factor has been the ambiguous legal status of private contractors. In the 2007 Blackwater shooting, the security firm initially maintained that the guards fired in self-defense, but investigations by the Iraqi government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation both conclude that the only shots fired came from Blackwater employees. The Department of Defense holds its contractors liable under laws covering the military, but Blackwater works for the State Department, which does not. Critics say that such large-scale security contracting results in a lack of coordination and accountability which poses a risk to American troops as well as to Iraqis, and that mistakes made by U.S.

High-powered weapons smuggled into Mexico from the United States are arming drug cartels in a bloody war with Mexican authorities that has killed more than 4,000 in 2008 alone, including hundreds of police officers, soldiers, and prosecutors — all while Mexico’s calls for the United States to cut off the flow have had little effect. Mexico’s strict gun laws make buying the weapons difficult, but in the United States, they are sold legally at stores, gun shows, and flea markets — and then smuggled across the border. The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) found that more than 90 percent of guns seized at the Mexican border were originally sold in the United States, two-thirds of which have been traced back to Texas, Arizona, and California. In a report issued in November, the Brookings Institution estimated that 2,000 guns cross the border into Mexico every day. Only 100 U.S. firearms agents and 35 inspectors are stationed along the border (compared to 16,000 Border Patrol agents).