I haven't spent a lot of time criticizing the Obama administration. He came into office at the worst of times, facing unbelievable obstacles and an incredibly heated political climate. The GOP has done everything in thier power to slow down his initiatives and to derail his plans. So I wait patiently for him to get a full team into place and to work through the initial crises before throwing my personal stones.
And to be perfectly honest....for the most part I've been very happy with much of what he has accomplished. For one thing...our economy is still here. Battered and bruised, but we seem to have avoided another "Great Depression". A great many very important legislative matters have been passed that Democrats have wanted for years. Even more are looming in the future.
But today, two items came out in the news that have raised questions that we as Americans deserve to have answered.
The first involves an "accounting error" (or actually several) that are found on the government website recovery.gov. This is where you go to see just how much stimulus money your district has received and how many jobs for your district that money has created or saved. It's billed as a shining example of the Obama administration's transparency in government!
You can log on and use the information pulled from this official site to tell your conservative friends that the Recovery Act they hate has injected $761,000 into the local economy and saved over 30 jobs in Arizona's 15th Congressional District. A handy resource you have to admit.
There's only one problem.....THERE IS NO 15TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT IN ARIZONA!
And this is not an isolated "mistake". The website lists many such problems and the administration has called them the result of human error.
"We report what the recipients submit to us," said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board. "Some recipients clearly don't know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number,....We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so. Human beings make mistakes."
To be honest, I believe them. I can see lots of places in the process of putting this website together where human error could make mistakes that would be reflected on the web. It's like the old data entry saying, "Garbage In...Garbage Out!" I don't see Joe Biden & Barack Obama sitting around the Oval Office at midnight, fudging numbers and drinking beer. But I can see an administration in the process of getting up and running letting some of the "little details" slip through without catching the mistakes.
Unfortunately, that's not good enough. The devil's in the details and when you are President you are accountable for those details.
It's not the end of the world, but if you want to appear truly transparent....you have to be accurate! It's just that simple. You need to fix this and explain how it happened and how it's been fixed.
The second issue that came to light today needs more than just "fixing". It needs a very detailed explanation from the President to the American people. The Office of the Inspector General of TARP has reported that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank, did an absolutely miserable job of bailing out AIG under the Bush administration. Apparently, rather than bargaining to get taxpayers the best deal possible for using thier tax dollars for AIG's bailout, Mr. Geithner paid top dollar for AIG's toxic assets. In fact, he paid ABOVE top dollar, often paying "an amount far above thier market value at the time". Wish I could get a deal like that for my business right now, Mr. President.
Now, I know that this was under the Bush administration and I know that following Bear Stearnes collapse there was a lot of hurried "bailing" to keep the country's "boat" afloat. When you rush that quickly on such a complex issue, very big and very costly mistakes happen. Bear Stearnes taught us quickly how dangerous it can be to hesitate when companies too big too fail, go bottoms up.
But the fact remains that both you and Secretary Geithner need to address this issue quickly and clearly. As taxpayers who paid for the bailout...we deserve that explanation.
So Mr. President, please take these two problems as a learning lesson for your first few months. Explain what happened and why it won't happen that way again. And try not to forget....GARBAGE IN = GARBAGE OUT!