The Center for Public Integrity

During the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush referred to Social Security reform as the “test of presidential candidates” — a test he planned to pass by aggressively pushing his version of reform, without regard for the always touchy politics of Social Security’s finances. Experts agree the program demands changes to survive. “The baby boomers’ retirement, starting this year, ushers in a permanent shift to an older population — and a permanent rise in the cost of Social Security,” said the nonpartisan Concord Coalition. “Finding a cure for the challenges facing Social Security will require reduced benefits, increased revenues, or both.” The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has urged early action to ensure Social Security’s financial solvency and provide future generations with the same benefits as current retirees. The GAO has reported that trust funds supporting Social Security would be exhausted by 2042. In 2005, the president produced his plan, which would have partially “privatized” Social Security by allowing workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes into private accounts. But Democrats were adamantly opposed to the privatization plan, so Bush managed only to form a study commission on Social Security that ultimately yielded no real solutions. The administration also spent $2.8 million to campaign for its unsuccessful privatization proposal. Congress seemed to have no appetite for seriously addressing Social Security’s finances, so no meaningful action has been forthcoming. Mark Lassiter, press officer for the Social Security Administration, told the Center “there is a need for reform and it must be done in a bipartisan manner.”

In 2006, U.S. Customs and Border Protection decided to outdo the border walls of the past and build a great barrier of data — a system of ground sensors, remote-control cameras, and radars that transmit real-time data to border agents — along the U.S.–Mexican border. But as of late 2008, only 28 miles of the “virtual” fence, known officially as the Secure Border Initiative Network, or SBInet, are up and running. The finished job is expected to run 6,000 miles along the northern and southern borders of the United States at a cost of $30 billion. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded the initial $2 billion contract for the project to Boeing, which promised to have large sections of the fence up and running by 2008. The first phase ran six months late and used commercially-available technology that was replaced almost immediately with fancier gadgets. In theory, border agents can use the information to intercept illegal transit, but after taking the pilot project for a test-run, border agents told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that it was “not an optimal system” for their needs. From the program’s inception, the GAO warned about the vagueness of the requirements set out in the contracting order, a problem that plagued two predecessors, the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System and America’s Shield Initiative. Now land-management issues have delayed the project. A September 2008 agreement with the Department of the Interior over DHS’s use of government land should have come through last July, but DHS failed to file the necessary paperwork. The department also will have to grab private property from some border land owners by eminent domain. Testifying before Congress in September, Randolph C.

The nation’s airports have been plagued by an alarming rise in dangerous runway incidents, but the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) response has been criticized as inadequate by a host of oversight bodies. So-called runway incursions — incidents in which aircraft, vehicles, or persons create a collision hazard — have appeared on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Most Wanted list of issues demanding improvement ever since 1990. At least 112 people have lost their lives due to incursion accidents since the issue first appeared on the NTSB list. Thousands more have faced harrowing close calls; among airports, Los Angeles International and Chicago O’Hare experienced the most incursions between 2001 and 2007. After a substantial rise in runway incursions from 1999 to 2001 (from 329 incidents up to 407), the FAA acted to curb the trend through regionally-based runway safety efforts, an education program, and creation of a runway safety office at agency headquarters. But the incursion rate began to rise again after 2003, and 2007 saw a 12 percent increase in incidents over the year before. That prompted criticism from the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the NTSB, which called the FAA response “unacceptable.” The FAA had not updated its runway safety plan after 2002 despite planning to do so every two to three years, and it let the director’s chair in its Office of Runway Safety sit unfilled for nearly three years as staff levels halved, leading the inspector general to name runway incursions as a Top Management Challenge of 2008.

A 2007 Center for Public Integrity investigation found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Superfund program had lost critical momentum and massive amounts of funding since the turn of the century, bringing further risk to the quarter of the nation’s population living within three miles of a hazardous waste site. The Center found the start rate for site cleanups from 2001 to 2006 had fallen by two-thirds from the previous six-year period, and while EPA completed construction work at an average of 79 sites per year from 1995 through 2000, that rate dropped to an average of 42 per year from 2001 to 2006. Officials argued this was due to the increased complexity of newer sites after previous cleanups picked the “low-hanging fruit,” but that failed to explain the decline in money retrieved from industry to reimburse EPA for cleanups — from more than $300 million in 1999 to just about $60 million in 2006. When Congress created the Superfund program in 1980, lawmakers established a trust fund supported by a tax on petroleum products and chemicals, and enabled EPA to push responsible parties to reimburse the agency after cleanups. The Superfund tax comprised more than two-thirds of that trust fund until 1995, when Congress allowed the tax to expire. After that, the bulk of trust fund money came from Congressional appropriations, which have been declining when adjusted for inflation. As a result, the trust fund balance declined from $4.7 billion at the start of fiscal year 1997 to $173 million at the start of fiscal year 2007. Experts said the erosion of the trust fund meant the agency no longer had the money to clean up sites first and stick industry with the bill afterward.

Senior federal employees are leaving their jobs at abnormally high rates at agencies charged with fighting terrorism. At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), senior-level employees left their jobs in 2005 and 2006 at a rate of 14.5 and 12.8 percent, respectively — double the average rate for such positions at all cabinet-level departments, according to the Government Accountability Office. The consolidation of 22 agencies under DHS is the biggest reorganization of the federal government since Harry Truman created the Department of Defense in 1947, and its growing pains are apparent. An internal survey that tracks federal employees’ satisfaction, the Federal Human Capital Survey, has measured low levels of job satisfaction at DHS since the department’s creation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has also had trouble retaining staff for its counterterrorism operations. In 2007, the inspector general at the Department of Justice wrote that “the frequent rotations and turnover within its senior management ranks” is inhibiting the FBI’s transformation into an intelligence-gathering agency. A study by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2008 found that the FBI needed to fill 20 percent of supervisory positions in the section at FBI headquarters that deals with al Qaeda-related cases. High attrition rates in crucial spots weaken organizational memory and effectiveness; these civil servants are on the front line of homeland security and need to be running at full throttle.

The plan was to open the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad — America’s largest embassy — in July 2007 at a cost of $592 million. But like so many other U.S. projects in Iraq, things went awry. The final price tag came in at $736 million; the building didn’t open for business until April 2008; and the project spawned at least one investigation. In the country where the American diplomatic mission is the largest and arguably the most critical in the world, the 1,000 U.S. government employees had to wait months for their embassy to be declared complete. The delay resulted from a controversy with construction contractors and safety concerns pointed out by State Department inspectors. The chief contractor for the embassy compound, First Kuwaiti, had never built an embassy before and said it did not know that certain building materials had to be approved by the State Department. Plus, internal documents suggest that officials in Baghdad rushed to meet construction deadlines, leaving safety risks unresolved. This delayed the project for months while State inspectors examined the embassy. What they found were hundreds of violations of the contract, along with bursting pipes and fire safety code violations. Repairs and remediation needed to address safety concerns added to the already climbing price for the embassy. The State Department is also investigating its Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO), which reportedly hired contractors whose charges were unjustifiably expensive. The State Department press office did not respond to a request for comment, but Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, told The Washington Post that he was pleased with the work done by First Kuwaiti. “The contractor has not shirked any of their responsibilities,” he said.

The Bush administration demoted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from a cabinet-level agency to a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), led by appointees who proved unprepared for the destructive 2005 hurricane season. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, emergency management took on a new importance in the federal government, and James Lee Witt, the director of FEMA during the Clinton administration, was widely credited with reinvigorating the troubled agency. Witt had previous experience in disaster management; Michael D. Brown, President George W. Bush’s pick for the job in 2003, did not, nor did other key members of FEMA’s top management after 2000. Under Brown, the federal agency’s connections with its state and local partners faded, undermining coordination on preparedness and response projects. When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, the response from DHS and FEMA was, by many accounts, slow and disorganized. Victims stranded in their houses drowned as the flood waters rose, and evacuees languished in the Louisiana Superdome. FEMA later drew sharp criticism from both the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Congress for its muddled chain of command. “A single individual directly responsible and accountable to the president must be designated to act as the central focal point to lead and coordinate the overall federal response in the event of a major catastrophe,” the GAO wrote in 2006. “Neither the DHS secretary nor any of his designees, such as the Principal Federal Official [Brown] filled this leadership role during Hurricane Katrina . . .” By September 2006, Brown had stepped down, but FEMA’s leadership continued to struggle to respond to victims’ needs for food, housing, and aid for reconstruction.

Every year as much as $60 billion in taxpayer money is stolen from Medicare, which pays for the health care of seniors and the disabled. This massive rip-off is done through various schemes, but largely by fraudulently billing for services or medical equipment they do not provide. “The legitimate Medicare recipient is hurt, the legitimate business that’s dispensing this and serving patients is hurt, every taxpayer is hurt, and we need to come down on this with both feet," U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Michael Leavitt told the press in December 2007. But no serious crackdown has taken place, despite calls by legislators from both parties. “Medicare fraud is running rampant across Florida and across the country,” Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, told The Miami Herald in February 2008 “We need to send a message to those bilking billions from the system that we won't stand for it and the penalties are going to be severe.” A Democrat, Representative Pete Stark of California, said bluntly of HHS’s weakness in detecting fraud: “This agency is incompetent,” he told The New York Times in August. A spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at HHS put the blame on Congress: “Over the past four years, the administration has requested $579 million for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Fund. Congress has not provided any of these resources.” He also noted that, despite the Centers’ insufficient resources, the agency has saved billions of dollars through their existing fraud review processes and pilot programs.

Follow-up:
HHS Secretary Leavitt has suggested increasing the amount of money spent on reviewing claims and identifying fraud, but despite sustained bipartisan criticism, the problem persists.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), under the Bush Administration, made an array of inappropriate, politically based decisions, some apparently illegal, which included choosing candidates for career appointments on political grounds. Some of these decisions reached back to the tenure of John Ashcroft, who served as attorney general from 2001 to early 2005, but many of them occurred — and burst into public view — while Alberto Gonzales served as attorney general, from 2005 to the fall of 2007. Under law, certain DOJ positions are reserved for political appointees, but legal internships, assistant U.S. Attorney positions, and immigration judgeships are supposed to be filled without regard to political affiliation. Before 2003, those interested in becoming immigration judges generally applied in response to public job postings, but then, according to a report by the DOJ inspector general, the White House and the Office of the Attorney General began expressing interest in these positions. Monica Goodling, DOJ White House liaison and senior counsel to the Attorney General, judged candidates for these and other jobs on criteria that included membership in a conservative legal society, statements on their “political philosophy,” and opinions on hot-button issues like abortion and gay marriage. In addition, Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ chief of staff, pushed for the unprecedented dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys under circumstances that appeared to be overtly political. He also suggested that the Bush administration use its power to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for indefinite periods to circumvent the Senate-confirmation process; one of those Sampson recommended for such an appointment was a former department official who had hired candidates for positions in the Civil Rights Division based on their credentials as Republicans and conservatives.

The 2008 presidential race produced its share of philosophical and political disputes, but one broad area of agreement underlined the campaigns of both nominees: The federal government is not functioning as it should. A McCain ad began, “Washington's broken. John McCain knows it,” while one of Barack Obama’s spots warned, “The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities, Washington has not.” 

In fact, the executive branch is proving unable to meet many of its most basic obligations to the American public. And the public appears to be increasingly uneasy. National polls show that less than 30 percent of Americans approve of President George W. Bush’s job performance, among the worst numbers since pollsters began tracking presidential approval in the 1940s. A mid-November Gallup Poll showed that 87 percent of respondents were dissatisfied with the way things are going in America today. 

Just how bad is this government dysfunction? In an effort to answer that question, the Center for Public Integrity embarked on an examination of the worst systematic failures of the federal government over the past eight years.

In this, a comprehensive assessment of these failures, we found more than 125 examples of government breakdown in areas as diverse as education, energy, the environment, justice and security, the military and veterans affairs, health care, transportation, financial management, consumer and worker safety, and more — failures which adversely affected ordinary people and made the nation a less open or less secure place to live. While some are, by now, depressingly familiar, many are less well-known but equally distressing. And though the list is diverse, it also reflects some recurring — and troubling — themes.