What I know is that it sounds awesome! I picture an evil cyborg general from the future, with his army of comptrollers, ready to open up a can of trollerness. He definitely wants to rule the world, speaks in a soviet accent (cyborg dialect of course), and is loaded with some serious software that lets him do all his comptrolling. He probably has some pretty sweet hardware as well, and can shoot missiles out of his nostrils.
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| Possible Comptroller General |
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| Possible Comptroller General |
He should have a comic book. You should draw me a picture of what the Comptroller General looks like.
Well, when he isn't comptrolling his robots, the Comptroller General is in theory doing his cover job, that of the Director of the Government Accountability Office or GAO. I realize that it may come as a surprise to most of us that Government and Accountability are found not only in the same sentence, but in the same acronym. If you are anything like me, your first question is, where the heck has this guy been for the last decade? Why have his comptrolling skills failed to control the government or made them admit accountability for their mistakes?
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| Comptroller General Under Cover |
Gene Dodaro is the current General. Yeah, General Dodaro. He likes to go by General Gene instead. Has a nice ring to it. Apparently the general is in for 15 years. Pretty sweet. Gene is pretty new to all this, being a Interim Comptroller appointed earlier this year in March, so he is not to blame for the previous madness. He is awaiting confirmation from Congress; perhaps they are laying down some ground rules first.
How exactly does the Comptroller make the government accountable? Well, funny you should ask, because the office used to be known as the General Accounting Office GAO, before its name was changed to the Government Accountability Office GAO. Got that? I mean, you wouldn't want to be the General of the General Accounting Office....much too redundant. The new name is much cooler, especially the new acronym.
Oh yeah, back to what they do. Accounting. They audit the financials of the Office of Management and Budget, and the financials at the Treasury. This makes them experts in examining negative, and some might add, imaginary numbers. Really big ones. What they have found may shock you.
According to wikipedia, who is quoting Cornell, who probably quoted Andy Bernard,
“For every fiscal year since 1996, when consolidated financial statements began, the Comptroller General has refused to endorse the accuracy of the consolidated figures for the federal budget, citing "(1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements." “
That's right, since the end of Ronald Reagan, through the Bushes, Clinton, and into the now, the Comptroller General of the United States can't even put his name to the numbers on the budget. He can't do it. As an expert in negative numbers, they probably are not negative enough, (or imaginary enough).
Overall it looks like GAO does a pretty good job of telling us how much money is being wasted. Head on over to www.gao.gov and check out the never ending story of mismanagement. Atreyu would be devastated.
As a watchdog, it appears their bark is worse then their bite, since they report to congress, who approves the same budget that the Comptroller General can't put is name to. They do throw a pretty mean party though, so next time you are in DC, swing on by the party palace, and don't forget to bring your financials. Make sure they use negative numbers though, lots of them. And say hi to General Dodaro for me.
Feel free to submit your own versions of the Comptroller General.
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