The Inspector General Scandal That Wasn’t

If the federal government’s fleet of inspectors general had been doing their jobs, would DOGE even exist?

The question arises in the wake of President Donald Trump’s mass firing of 17 of these ostensibly independent, in-house investigators, 8 of whom are suing the administration for wrongful termination.

Every day brings new DOGE revelations of waste, whether it’s DOGE-meister Elon Musk asking why 150-year-olds are still getting Social Security checks, or Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), chair of the Senate’s DOGE Caucus, highlighting the U.S. Agency for International Development’s grants to Ukrainian fashion models and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (For more, see TheDogeFiles.org.)

What took so long?

We didn’t hear much about this gusher of wasteful spending, often ideologically driven, from the inspectors general who were just fired, but that hasn’t stopped a predictable chorus of woe. Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) wailed that “Trump wants no accountability for malfeasance,” while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) denounced a “chilling purge” by a new administration with a “lawless approach.” But Trump was clear during the campaign that he intended to clean up the inspector general system. He pledged to “make every Inspector General’s Office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State.”

The president only appoints about half of the federal government’s 74 IGs. The other half are appointed by agency heads—that is, by the very people who should be in the crosshairs of the IGs. And don’t forget Congress’s accountability for the mess, because IGs actually report both to their agency head and to Congress, and if you think members want honest appraisals of the federal programs they take credit for, I have a big, beautiful bridge to sell you.

IGs can serve indefinitely, though they can be fired at will by the president or agency heads. And this month’s firings come amid multiple studies finding that federal IGs aren’t excelling at their job of auditing and investigating federal agencies, recommending policies “that promote the efficiency, economy, and effectiveness” of federal programs, as well as “preventing and detecting waste, fraud, and abuse,” as the Congressional Research Service summarizes the law governing IGs.

The president retains the power to remove nearly all inspectors general, hindered only slightly by some speed bumps, such as a requirement to notify Congress beforehand. And some IGs have been removing themselves preemptively, for fear of the new president, including the IGs serving the Central Intelligence Agency and the director of national intelligence. In the spring of 2020, during his first term, Trump fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, who’d alerted House Democrats about Trump’s contacts with Ukraine.

One obvious place to look for new IGs who know where the bodies are buried would be among the thousands of staff currently serving in IG offices.

The largest offices are at Defense and Health and Human Services, each of which has about 1,500 employees. No doubt some of them are keen to have their fetters removed so they can do the job they’re supposed to do. The president may also transfer IGs between agencies, if a high-quality IG at a small agency deserves promotion to a major mess like Defense or Education.

As part of this revamping of federal IGs, one obvious task for the musketeers at DOGE would be to read (perhaps with AI assistance) every IG report of the last five years. This would reap three benefits. First, it would uncover waste, fraud, and abuse that’s already been documented. Second, it would allow DOGE to assess the 74 IGs’ work product, identifying which IGs deserve to stay and which should be fired. And third, it would provide something like “oppo” research on the agencies, so that when resistant career bureaucrats leak to their media pals that the world will end if their agency is touched, the administration can inform Americans of the skeletons in that preciously pure agency’s closet.

Another obvious task for the musketeers would be to create a public database, government wide, that contains not only every IG’s reports but more importantly, whether the recommendations have been acted upon. Competent IGs will rightly point out that many past abuses for which they’ve recommended fixes have gone ignored. DOGE can use some simple tech to keep these open wounds easily visible to the media and to members of the public who have been inspired by DOGE to dig into federal outrages.

DOGE is doing a great job battling the present mess, but the IGs must become the Permanent Department of Government Efficiency to battle the swamp-dwellers who live in all parties and branches of governments.

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This article first appeared in the Giving Review on February 15, 2025.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-inspector-general-scandal-that-wasnt/