Topic - Government Accountability Office

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  DeCLEENE: Eliminating dollar bill would diminish first president's legacy

  Presidents Day is a holiday dedicated to commemorating George Washington, the father of our nation. Ironically, as we celebrate this moment, America is in danger of losing another remembrance for our first president: the $1 bill.

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  Education Department deploys 'mystery shoppers' to check for fraud

  The Department of Education has dispatched "mystery shoppers" posing as prospective students to various colleges and universities across the country — an anti-fraud initiative that came months after another agency dumped a similar plan amid criticism that it amounted to spying.

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  McKINLEY: Financing failure: The state of bailouts

  The recent sound and fury regarding Richard Cordray's appointment as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, though justified, ignores much more crucial financial-reform issues. Three years after the explosion of bailouts in 2008-09, government has failed to address the underlying problems revealed during that period of panic-induced interventions.

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  LAMBRO: Reorganizing deck chairs on U.S. Titanic

  President Obama's puny election-year plan to consolidate a handful of government agencies and programs is about three years and $4 trillion too late. With America's jobless rate stuck at a few tenths below 9 percent and his dismal job approval polls in the mid-40s - the equivalent of a failing grade - Mr. Obama is attempting to impersonate a budget cutter. He's fooling no one.

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  SCHATZ: Help wanted, a president who knows how to manage

  "Huge organization with serious financial management problems seeks a CEO to make tough decisions in order to avoid bankruptcy." The federal government should be running this want ad in response to the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) annual audit of federal agency financial statements, released last month.

• Texas coalition sees mixed results on spending on border security

  A coalition of Texas border mayors, county executives and economic development leaders said on Thursday the federal government has spent nearly $90 billion over the past decade to secure the Southwest border with no better than mixed results.

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  WALKER: Washington must face fiscal reality

  There is a reason the comptroller general of the United States serves the longest term of appointment in government aside from certain judges, who have lifetime appointments. It's because the person who is responsible for heading the Government Accountability Office (GAO) plays an essential and nonpartisan role in assessing the federal government's performance and reporting on the government's financial condition and future outlook.

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  Feds use video surveillance to catch fraud for workers' comp

  The husband and wife postal workers at a North Carolina mail-sorting plant were out of work and collecting disability benefits when they first came under surveillance.

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  Pentagon's inspector general finds no misconduct in briefing program

  The Pentagon's inspector general has released his final report on a Donald H. Rumsfeld-era program for briefing TV and radio military analysts, concluding for a second time that there was no wrongdoing.

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  Obama, Congress restore horse-slaughter industry

  President Obama earlier this month quietly signed into law a spending bill that restores the American horse-slaughter industry, just a few months after a government investigation said the ban on slaughtering for human consumption was backfiring.

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  RYAN: Another burden for our war fighters

  I just returned from a trip to Afghanistan. As I saw on previous trips to Iraq, America's troops are performing an extremely tough mission with an extraordinary level of commitment and sacrifice.

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  Report blames fires on border crashers

  Illegal immigrants started nearly 40 percent of human-caused wildfires along the Arizona and Mexico border between 2006 and 2010, according to a new government report that backs up claims state lawmakers made during this year's catastrophic blazes.

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  GAO: Illegal immigrants caused nearly half of border fires

  Illegal immigrants started nearly 40 percent of human-ignited wildfires along the U.S.-Mexico border between 2006 and 2010, according to a new government report that gives new credence to claims Arizona lawmakers made earlier this year during catastrophic blazes in the Southwest.

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  EDITORIAL: Obama's Kenyan move

  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report Monday confirming Obama administration meddling in the drafting of controversial provisions of Kenya's constitution, which were ratified last year. Officials funneled $18 million in taxpayer cash to a number of groups, at least one of which openly worked to reverse the African country's ban on killing the unborn. U.S. law prohibits lobbying for or against abortion with foreign aid money.

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  Coburn: Congress shirking oversight duties

  Congress has punted on doing the kind of scrutiny of federal agencies that's required to prevent waste and keep the government running smoothly, according to a new report by Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who serves as the institution's unofficial watchdog.

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