Late phone bills...

Name one department of the government that you think would be good with financial matters, especially with paying bills on time (and no, not the Internal Revenue Service, they just take the tax money, not spend it).

One might say the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) might be good at this type of thing. After all, they do have to follow strict procedures and laws when apprehending a suspect, then trying him, and getting him convicted. Well, it turns out that the FBI, for all of its excellence in crime fighting, isn’t good with paying bills on time. Here you might argue on the number of bills, and the type of bills that they are, which is indeed a good point. However, these are not your run of the mill office phone bills. These bills are the phone bills that cover important phone lines that transmit surveillance results to the FBI, something terribly important to the mission of the FBI in combating terror and criminals.

But wait, there’s more FBI failing in the realm of finances. This was not just a case of not paying one or two bills. Over half of the 990 telecommunication surveillance bills the FBI has to pay to keep service going were not paid on time. In addition to not paying phone bills, an FBI employee stole $25,000 from an FBI Field Office. These stories are just two of possibly many financial oversights in the FBI that a recent audit of the FBI that was quasi-released (the FBI claims that most of the information contained in the audit is too sensitive for public release).

This is a huge problem. This is the top law enforcement agency in the country, and they are not receiving potential national security data because some clerk didn’t pay the phone bills? What gives? What kind of accountability is the FBI held to? As law enforcement, they should be the second most efficient (second to the Department of Defense, in theory of course) part of the government! But no, their financial management system dates back to the 1980s (come on, does anyone run software from the 1980s?... Anybody?). If the FBI has the technology to track terrorists using cell phones and the Global Positioning System (GPS), why can they not pay phone bills and run a financial management program that pays bills on time, in addition to having halfway-decent oversight so FBI employees cannot steal the equivalent of a base-model brand-new Toyota Camry?

After the gross negligence of the U.S. Congress in passing a series of bills totaling over $550 billion, we should call on our government to get their finances in line, and stop the immense waste that slips through the cracks of politicians, but gets picked up by the Congressional watchdogs.