About Us

Accountability the key goal of the Subcommittee’s work

As Ranking Member of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee I am working tirelessly to conduct effective and rigorous oversight of the federal government. Reckless and unsustainable spending is inexcusable, especially at a time when our nation is at war, and when major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are headed toward bankruptcy.

I welcome feedback and suggestions from Americans and anyone around the world who interacts with the Federal government. You may contact my office by phone, fax, mail, or by email.

I display the “Principles of Accountability” at all of the hearings to remind the audience and my fellow senators that taxpayers deserve nothing less than a government that is accountable for its actions and spending. The following principles guide my oversight work in the U.S. Senate.

Tom Coburn, M.D.

Each month, taxpayers "contribute" to the Federal government out of their hard-earned income. That "contribution" is taken by the Federal government under laws of Federal taxation, under threat of imprisonment and fines for those who refuse to pay their taxes. When a government wields this enormous amount of power, there is no room for any abuse of that power. Unaccountable spending of tax dollars is an abuse of power. Taxpayers have a right to demand accountability of all Federal agencies and programs.

Accountability means that an agency or program measurably achieves the mission it was created to achieve, in a cost-effective, efficient, and open manner.

As the branch of government that spends the taxpayers' money, Congress is ultimately responsible for ensuring accountability for those expenditures. When Congress fails to do its job overseeing current Federal spending, while at the same time, increasing that spending each year, citizens have been unconstitutionally deprived of appropriate checks and balances to which they are entitled as taxpayers.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Federal agencies lack accountability. For the past 25 years numerous watchdog groups and commissions have detailed enormous amounts of waste, fraud and inefficiency in the federal government. In the 1980s, for example, President Reagan's Grace Commission concluded that as many as one out of every three taxpayer dollars is squandered through government waste and inefficiency.

Every federal agency and program should be subject to sunset and review requirements that will force them to justify their existence. Effective oversight should also prompt Congress to consider whether some functions of the federal government could be better performed in the private sector.

Accountability has 6 guiding principles:

1. Transparency

   
   Transparency is the foundation for all accountability. Transparency means that everything an agency does with taxpayer dollars should be publicly known and easy to find. Unless classified for the purpose of national security, no program is exempt from complete transparency about how it spends taxpayer dollars. Transparency also implies that the process by which funds are spent is an open and honest one, including competition in contracting, grant review procedures, and regular progress reporting on measurable indicators of success. Agencies should be able to track every single dollar they spend. There can be no accountability without transparency, although transparency alone is not sufficient to achieve accountability. It is merely the starting point. Unfortunately, most agencies and programs are not fully transparent, and exposing this problem is where much of the Subcommittee's effort goes.

2. Results

   
   Each program or agency was created by the Legislative or Executive branches to achieve a certain mission. Progress in achieving that mission should be measurable and sustained. The Subcommittee demands each program measure its results in a reasonable way and achieve its mission. Those results must be documented in a transparent way to the public. Programs that fail to achieve results must be reformed or defunded.

3. Competition

   
   As in the private sector, obtaining the highest quality product for the lowest price is only accomplished by fair and open competition. Taxpayers should demand nothing less from the products bought by the Federal government with their money. When the government contracts for a good or service, it should be able to prove in a public way that there was a fair and open competition for its business. But competition is only related to process, it's not enough just to have competition. That competition must result in results: namely, that the highest quality good or service was purchased for the lowest price.

4. Priority setting

   
   Like every family knows, money does not grow on trees, and there's never enough. All households and businesses have to set priorities and the Federal government should be no different. Unlike a private household, where more money is always welcome, government will and should always have limited resources. The more resources, the more areas of our lives are invaded by government control and influence. Keeping government small is a good thing! But that means that elected officials have to set priorities about how to most effectively and appropriately spend taxpayer dollars. The government is not a "nanny" and can't do everything. There are critical functions that it can and should perform, as outlined in the Constitution.
   
   The President sets his priorities each year as part of his budget request presented to Congress. But it is up to the Congress at that point, to endorse the President's priorities, or establish new ones, and fund them accordingly. Priority-setting is, by necessity, the role of the Congress. While there are an almost infinite number of programs that are well-intentioned and may have some benefits, even good programs may need to be cut or de-funded altogether in order to ensure that more important functions are done well by the Federal government.
   
   Another element of priority-setting is weighing the importance of a program against not only other programs, but against the increasing unsustainable debt that is accumulating for future generations. In light of the unfunded liabilities caused by growth in entitlement spending such as Medicare and Social Security, the Subcommittee asks: "can we afford to keep funding all the programs we currently fund, or is saving our grandchildren from crushing debt a higher priority?"
   
   There can be no accountability when programs are funded in an ad hoc or "auto-pilot" way - where programs just get funded every year out of habit, or because choosing to de-fund a program would create an outcry among special interest groups. The Subcommittee investigates the priority-setting by agencies, both by taking on low-priority programs and for exposing those agencies which do not effectively set priorities.

5. Responsiveness

   
   Accountability requires that the Federal government be responsive to inquiries about its activities and finances. That means that when a taxpayer, who is like a shareholder in a corporation, asks questions about his government, he is answered in a timely fashion. Responsiveness is also measured by how quickly and thoroughly the agency responds to inquiries by Congress, by the Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office (Congress' investigatory arm), Congressional Research Service, outside watch-dog groups, and Congressional Committees.
   
   Responsiveness refers not only to oversight inquiries, but also the speed and ease of interacting with that agency in its normal business with customers, such as filing a claim with FEMA, or signing up for flood insurance, appealing a Medicaid decision, interacting with the IRS, bidding on a government contract, and a host of other interactions that a taxpayer may have with his government.

6. Spending discipline

   
   Taxpayers expect that agencies will not squander or be careless with their money. Spending discipline refers to an agency's ability to make the most of every dollar, ensuring the agency does not pay outrageous prices for goods and services, programs live within their budgets, and that budgets reflect a prioritization scheme that recognizes the ideal of shrinking the size of government. It should not be a default that a program is going to grow by some automatic percentage each year, or that any program can escape regular review for its success or failure for meeting its mission, or even that the mission is still worth funding. The Subcommittee will hold agencies accountable for budgeting in a way so as to shrink government, to live within budgets, and to aggressively seek out and correct waste and redundancies.