Speaker 1: Seven oh five, here a fifty five krc DE talk station.
Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday one time's right here. Glad to be hosted
Speaker 1: for fifty five Carcy Mornings. So especial when a guy
Speaker 1: like Todd Zinser is in studio to talk about what's
Speaker 1: going on in Washington, d C. Spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time there because Todd was an inspector generally. He was
Speaker 1: in DC for thirty one years conducting audits and investigations
Speaker 1: of federal officials programs and operations. And he penned an
Speaker 1: op ed piece to the Cincinni Inquirer of the new
Speaker 1: igs and Doge should collaborate Todd, It's always great to
Speaker 1: have you in studio, my friend. Thank you, Brian, Good morning,
Speaker 1: Good morning. Let's start with, you know, ten thousand foot view.
Speaker 1: What do before we get to the idea of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump firing them? What do inspector generals do? What are
Speaker 1: they tasked with? What are their day to day responsibilities?
Speaker 2: Right? The Inspectors General are based on a nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight law called the ig Act of nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: It's been amended a couple of times, but it basically
Speaker 2: puts Inspectors general in each of the department or cabinet
Speaker 2: departments and numerous other agencies. And it basically has two sides.
Speaker 2: They have an investigative side and they have an audit side.
Speaker 2: An audit is very expansive. It's it security audits, contract audits,
Speaker 2: grant audits, financial statement audits. They do the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and on investigations. They do investigations of fraud against the government,
Speaker 2: criminal cases, and they also do administrative cases involving misconduct
Speaker 2: and other rule violations and things like that. They operate
Speaker 2: a hotline for fraud, waste and abuse reports, and they
Speaker 2: have a dual reporting requirement. They report to both the
Speaker 2: Secretary of the Department. They have a reporting obligation to Congress.
Speaker 2: So they're like stuck in the middle. And in years
Speaker 2: past they've been described as straddling a barbed wire fence.
Speaker 2: So there are i think right now, seventy four Inspectors General.
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen seventy eight, I think it started with
Speaker 2: a dozen, and it's just expanded. And there are igs
Speaker 2: that are appointed by the president and there are igs
Speaker 2: that are appointed by the head of their independent agency.
Speaker 2: So the igs that Trump removed, it's called removal in
Speaker 2: the federal government not firing, but the ones that he
Speaker 2: removed are all from most For the most part, they're
Speaker 2: from the cabinet departments. There's only two cabinet departments that
Speaker 2: were not affected. Two IGS and cabinet departments that were
Speaker 2: not affected. One was Justice Michael Horowitz and the other
Speaker 2: was the IG at the Department of Homeland Security, who
Speaker 2: is currently doing cases or investigations of the Secret Service
Speaker 2: and what happened with the assassination attempts. So those are
Speaker 2: the only two. All the other igs removed came from
Speaker 2: cabinet departments. There are a couple of agencies, like the
Speaker 2: IG for Afghan Reconstruction, I guess was removed for some reason.
Speaker 2: He was actually a good IG. But the focus is
Speaker 2: on the departments.
Speaker 1: Now this I guess what I consider. And you know,
Speaker 1: pick a department, and I don't think you can find
Speaker 1: a single department in the federal government that hasn't been
Speaker 1: accused of or allowed fraud, waste, and abuse to occur
Speaker 1: under its watch. I mean Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, the
Speaker 1: PPP loan program. We go down the entire list of
Speaker 1: any government program. People are constantly committing acts of fraud,
Speaker 1: and billions and billions of dollars could be saved if
Speaker 1: that was ferreted out. So that that has happened and
Speaker 1: continues to happen over I would argue deck aids that
Speaker 1: failure lies in the lapse of the IGS.
Speaker 2: Then, well, to a certain extent it does. They have
Speaker 2: to I mean they have to have a good program
Speaker 2: in place to identify their risks in the department. They
Speaker 2: look at programs and say, what are the risks in
Speaker 2: these departments that is going to be defrauded and they're
Speaker 2: supposed to identify that and report those And the fact
Speaker 2: is that the programs are set up in such a
Speaker 2: way that they're easy to defraud. Yeah, and there's not
Speaker 2: a whole lot the IG can do across the board
Speaker 2: like that. But if they have a case, or if
Speaker 2: they have an audit that they perform, they're going to
Speaker 2: make a recommendation for improvements. And they're not the most
Speaker 2: well funded agencies in the federal government.
Speaker 1: I can tell you that well, I can understand that,
Speaker 1: But I mean therein lies the challenge. If billions of
Speaker 1: dollars are being misspent or stolen, I can make the
Speaker 1: argument then it will be a great allocation of resources
Speaker 1: to improve the funding to allow the its to actually
Speaker 1: be able to do their job and ferret out this
Speaker 1: waste and abuse and fraud.
Speaker 2: Right and and not to be too cynical, but like,
Speaker 2: I'll go ahead, there's been there's been special Inspectors General
Speaker 2: set up for various reasons, like Pandemic Relief, the Recovery Act.
Speaker 2: They set up special igs to focus on those areas.
Speaker 2: And when they do that, Congress is able to say, well,
Speaker 2: we put an IG in place, so we have fixed
Speaker 2: that problem. The IG is on the case when it's
Speaker 2: really kind of just window dressing in a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: Oh exactly, they put an IG in place, but they
Speaker 2: don't give the IG all the resources here or she
Speaker 2: needs so.
Speaker 1: Or as you put it out a moment ago. Congress
Speaker 1: is the ones who is the one who created the
Speaker 1: program or passed the law that's being followed in its implementation.
Speaker 1: But the law itself has so many giant holes in
Speaker 1: it that allow this easy fraud to occur. They don't
Speaker 1: go back and fix the problem that they started with this,
Speaker 1: you know, a poorly written law.
Speaker 2: Right, like the the pandemic relief programs, like the people PPP,
Speaker 2: the pandemic relief has been defrauded by hundreds of billions
Speaker 2: of dollars. Yeah, so in situations like that, there are
Speaker 2: some things the igs can do, but not much really.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, well, sorry conclusion on that from Todd Zenzer,
Speaker 1: But he was in this role and he knows what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. Is there any argument that these now
Speaker 1: fired igs can make that they're allowed to keep their job?
Speaker 1: I know there's been a tradition of presidents keeping in
Speaker 1: place and this is the subject matter of your op
Speaker 1: ed piece. New igs and doges should collaborate, Obviously. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's wants is a new sheriff in town. He wants
Speaker 1: his own people there, people who are aligned with his
Speaker 1: message about ferreting out fraud, waste, and abuse and cutting
Speaker 1: the size and the scope of government. So I get
Speaker 1: his motivation, But do they have any claim to the
Speaker 1: job that they have been removed from? Right?
Speaker 2: Well, back in two thousand and eight, Congress was trying
Speaker 2: to put some kind of protection in place for the igs,
Speaker 2: and the original idea was to establish some kind of
Speaker 2: four cause standard for igs that they couldn't be fired
Speaker 2: at will. The president would have to establish some cause
Speaker 2: to fire them. Well, that never happened, and instead, oh,
Speaker 2: they compromised and put this reporting requirement in place that
Speaker 2: the president had to give Congress thirty days. Notice why,
Speaker 2: I don't really know. I never understood what was supposed
Speaker 2: to happen in those thirty days, except maybe give the
Speaker 2: IG a couple more paychecks or give Congress time to
Speaker 2: build a big frenzy around it. But it really has
Speaker 2: no purpose. And I think that Trump ignored that requirement
Speaker 2: on purpose, on purpose because they don't think it's constitutional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that that.
Speaker 2: It interferes with the president's authority to hire and fire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I think they just ignored it. There is a
Speaker 2: case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the thing that
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren set up. They set that up completely outside
Speaker 2: of the president's authority and Congress's authority. That is funded
Speaker 2: by the Federal Reserve, and there is a fork. They
Speaker 2: tried to put a four cause provision in there, and
Speaker 2: that failed. Somebody sued them, and that no longer exists.
Speaker 2: So they are now also under the authority of the president.
Speaker 2: But the authority of the president to hire and fire
Speaker 2: is pretty fundamental. Well, I would say, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: his administration, and he the nation would well served if
Speaker 2: a bunch of IGS are out there undermining the administration's
Speaker 2: aims and goals. Well, the other thing that goes on,
Speaker 2: and it goes on under the radar, is back in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, I did a presentation for a group about
Speaker 2: the IGS, and I went and looked at headlines in
Speaker 2: the paper trying to figure out what the IGS were
Speaker 2: up to, and article headline after headline after headline where
Speaker 2: all of these reports about Democrats asking igs to investigate
Speaker 2: the Trump administration for one reason or another. You know,
Speaker 2: for example, one of them was they wanted the Treasury
Speaker 2: IG to investigate why the Harriet Tubman twenty dollars bill
Speaker 2: was being delayed. I mean, that's that's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that Congress just tries to harass the Trump administration
Speaker 2: back in twenty twenty at least. And I don't think
Speaker 2: Trump wants to put up with that either. So he's
Speaker 2: can imagine he's going to put his people in place
Speaker 2: that will tell Congress, you know, we're not going to
Speaker 2: do that. Plus he disrupts the relationship between the incumbent
Speaker 2: IGS and Congress. You build a relationship with people in Congress,
Speaker 2: congressmen and staff. Well, he's disrupted all of that with
Speaker 2: these removals.
Speaker 1: Let's pause. We'll bring Todd back and find out do
Speaker 1: Inspectors General have to listen to folks in Congress badgering
Speaker 1: them to investigate the president himself. Let's find out what
Speaker 1: leverage they have with Todd Zen's or former Inspector General himself.
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Speaker 1: Fifty about KRCV talk station, Happy Tuesday. Todd's ins are
Speaker 1: consider at city. He knows what he's talking about because
Speaker 1: he was an inspector general, had to live in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And he served his various different inspectors General.
Speaker 1: I guess firing these inspectors centers makes all the sense
Speaker 1: in the world, and he todd. As you've talked about
Speaker 1: and as I asked you, given the scope of any
Speaker 1: of these departments over which they set, getting a handle
Speaker 1: on the job in and of itself has got to
Speaker 1: be a long term proposition. I mean the size of
Speaker 1: like the Medicare program or Social Security or Commerce, as
Speaker 1: you just mentioned to me when you were when you
Speaker 1: get centered to Commerce, like I really didn't even know
Speaker 1: what commerce is all about. So I learned the.
Speaker 2: Job right well. The the transition between igs goes on
Speaker 2: and you have to rely on your You have to
Speaker 2: rely on the staff there that they're still They've got
Speaker 2: their audits planned and they're conducting their audits, and the
Speaker 2: investigative side is doing their investigations. That the challenge is
Speaker 2: to understand from the department's perspective what's going on, and
Speaker 2: meeting with the heads of the departments, meeting with the
Speaker 2: people in the departments that are really carrying out the programs.
Speaker 2: You got to get out and you have to do
Speaker 2: that kind of groundwork to really understand what the issues
Speaker 2: are in the department. When I got to Commerce, I
Speaker 2: went around to each departments and spoke to the leadership.
Speaker 2: And here's an example. I went to the Patent Office
Speaker 2: right and talked about their challenges, and the big challenge
Speaker 2: for them was how long what their backlog was. There's thousands,
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of patent applications in a backlog, and
Speaker 2: I said, well, isn't the goal to reduce the backlog
Speaker 2: to like zero or close to zero. Well, no, they
Speaker 2: can't do that because if it gets too low, then
Speaker 2: they don't have enough work for their patent examiners. So
Speaker 2: it's like you run into things like that. They really
Speaker 2: don't really don't make sense.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: It does.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just an illustration of the stupidity of government,
Speaker 1: you know. Because they do not have to earn to
Speaker 1: keep themselves alive and to float like any other business.
Speaker 1: They live off stealing money from us. They've got no
Speaker 1: incentive to do their job. In order to keep the job,
Speaker 1: they've dragged their feet.
Speaker 2: We did one case at the Patent Office where they
Speaker 2: hired all these paralegals because they were going to hire
Speaker 2: a bunch of additional patent judges. So they hired all
Speaker 2: these paralegals, but they never got around to hiring the judges.
Speaker 2: So these paralegals worked from home and did nothing, and
Speaker 2: somebody finally got a guilty conscience that called the IG's
Speaker 2: office and said, hey, we're sitting around getting paid to
Speaker 2: do nothing. And they wasted millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: And what was crazy is they all got above average
Speaker 2: performance appraisals and they got performance bonuses. Oh so things
Speaker 2: like that happen.
Speaker 1: You know, you say it and you just wish it
Speaker 1: wasn't true, But in so many levels, it just doesn't
Speaker 1: surprise me at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's a big The federal government is huge.
Speaker 1: It's too big people.
Speaker 2: People don't really appreciate how huge it is.
Speaker 1: Well, going back to the idea that Congress can pester
Speaker 1: one or other inspectors general to look into and investigate,
Speaker 1: like say the president of the United States of America,
Speaker 1: which has happened under Trump administration. Do the inspector general say,
Speaker 1: Can they turn around and say, no, that's not my job.
Speaker 1: I'm over the Commerce Department. I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: investigate about Trump or fill in the black president. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the big controversies that the IG investigated
Speaker 2: under Trump was when a Hurricane Dorian occurred and there
Speaker 2: was all kinds of destruction. Trump had actually predicted that
Speaker 2: the hurricanes path was going to be different than what
Speaker 2: the Weather Service had predicted, and he used the little
Speaker 2: marker to mark up their math. Yeah. Well, the IG
Speaker 2: was requested to investigate all that, and it's like, why,
Speaker 2: what's the big deal?
Speaker 1: So that's the find out if Donald Trump's clairvoyant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I demanded an answer. So that's the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that can go on, and it did. It did
Speaker 1: go on with the Democrats when Trump came in. They
Speaker 1: were sending all kinds of requests to the igs all
Speaker 1: over the government. Well, you didn't restore my confidence in
Speaker 1: the government, todd Sensor, just putting an exclamation point on
Speaker 1: everything that we were fearing and worrying about. It's all true, folks,
Speaker 1: It's a lot worse than you and I ever imagine.
Speaker 1: Please Dear God, new sheriff in town lot, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and the DOGE team and everybody else, These new Inspector
Speaker 1: General stick to the task of their job and fared
Speaker 1: out the fraud wasted abuse on behalf of the American taxpayer.
Speaker 1: Do you have any optimism that that might happen time?
Speaker 2: Well, what I'm optimistic for is that a lot of
Speaker 2: this is being done with these removals clear the path
Speaker 2: for the IGS to align their YEAH resources and operations
Speaker 2: with the Department of Government Efficiency the government that DOGE
Speaker 2: has put teams in each department, but it's very small teams.
Speaker 2: And if they could align with the IG and instead
Speaker 2: of thinking of it as they want to prevent the
Speaker 2: IGS from doing work, they need to view it as
Speaker 2: they want the IGS to do specific, exactly targeted work
Speaker 2: that will support what DOOSE just trying to do.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that can happen. And let's face it, man, there
Speaker 1: is a ton of low hanging fruit out there that
Speaker 1: they could get rid of right away. Todd, you always
Speaker 1: have a welcome spot here in the fifty five KRC
Speaker 1: Morning Show. Appreciate your being able to tap into your
Speaker 1: knowledge and expertise in these areas, and we'll look forward
Speaker 1: to having you on the show again real soon seven
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