Joining us for that conversation is kathryn newcomer. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you. Im delighted to be here. Host lets start off with the role of the Inspector General. One of the best parts of what is going on now is most people have no idea what the Inspector General is. They are a unique role that was established during the 1970s in andonse to Financial Issues perceptions of financial mismanagement in executive agencies by congress. A series of laws were passed that dealt with ways to reduce waste. Established the first 12 Inspector Generals. Of clearing fraud, waste, and abuse was one aspect. They were to look at the economy and efficiency of federal agencies. There are now 75 inspectors general. They look at three different functions they fulfill in agencies. One that has been getting all the press is investigation. That is not looking at wrongdoing. Refer cases to the department of justice. The second is financial auditing. A big part of the actual motivations for the act in the beginning. Finding better use of funds and ways to improve internal controls and improve financial management. The third is looking at Program Improvements for economy efficiency. There are separate units within each Inspector General. The investigators are the ones that look for the potential and follow up on whistleblowers that come in two hotlines. Hotlines bring up hundreds of issues. Needs to be a vetting process to find out which are the most serious to look at. The other unique thing about the Inspector General is that it is nested in the shared powers of theconstitution in that congress and president share the the three appoint dozen or so that are senate confirmed. To ensure that they have adequate resources, and to ensure that the agency follow up on recommendations. Thousands of recommendations are made to improve agencies each year by inspectors general. Somebody needs to implement them. General should have the Institutional Knowledge to work with the other people in the agencies that it needs to in order to implement the recommendations to make improvements. The role itself, is that a partisan role . Guest absolutely not. That was a key aspect of this unusual shared powers. The inspectors general are responsible to the agency had and congress concurrently. Their reports go up from their website to both. They have two masters. Thats why people talk about the fact that they walk the fence between two masters. They cannot be too close to one or the other. The act specifically says that the person to be appointed needs to have specific skills and experience in financial management, law, and Public Administration. Everything that has been in the law and that has been written about them is very clear that it is a nonpartisan and nonpolitically motivated situation. Power and Inspector General has his the perception that they are objective and not objectiveat that the is to improve the efficacy of our government. They are not to be involved in policy deliberations. I have had many inspectors aneral say when they are at leadership meeting, if a policy issue comes up, they leave the room because they may have to a particular audit policy or program later. The intent was clear from the beginning that Inspector Generals are nonpartisan. If you want to ask kathryn newcomer about inspectors general, you can do so. Democrats 202 7488000. Republicans 202 7488001. Independents 202 7488002. On our text us and post cspan twitter feed. You talked about it a little bit, but in the last couple of weeks, inspectors general have with the of the news firings of my quagga sin of the Intelligence Community and Christie Graham at health and human services. Is this a common occurrence . No, and particularly not like this. A lot of the conversation that is going on now is actually part ofe investigative the Inspector General function. Inspector general function and the whistleblowers and so on area i sense that is only a portion of that is only a portion of what they do. In our book, Charles Johnson and i, charles is a scholar from texas a and m, we looked throughout history through the end of the obama administration. Firings are rather unusual. What happens is congress, more will be unhappy with an Inspector General. It could be either way. It could be they are too aggressive or perceived to be to inline with their agency head. There is a pressure for them to step down. Similarly it was very rare that you would find the inspector outright fired though the pressure led to the Inspector General resigning. Beforee of the instances a lack ofally due to understanding of the role of the Inspector General and the fact that they are not political appointees. When Ronald Reagan came in and fired them, it was more the fact that they were unclear. There was a lack of clarity over whether they were supposed to appoint their own. In both cases with reagan and trump they then backed off. Many wente of reagan ahead and resigned but many stayed. The presumption of firing is rare, it is more the presser the pressure. The thing that is more worrisome to me is that we want to make sure that we have this Inspector General appointed who are in line with the qualities that were clarified in the act and have been perpetuated. That is nonpartisan, absolutely background,th legal Public Administration background, and so on. Most of the Inspector Generals have had government background. Up incessarily moving their own Inspector General offices, sometimes that happened , but they have had experience many times in other Inspector General offices and they will move to the top in another office. A perception of objectivity and integrity. Host we have a call lined up. Kathleen from elizabeth, pennsylvania. Line for democrats. You are on. Go ahead. Caller thank you for taking my call. Have checks and balances here and we have inspectors general that are supposed to oversee certain things, how is it that they get fired when they do their job . An example is this pompeo situation where he is having people walk his dogs and do his personal business. He did not deny it so i am assuming that is true. The arms sales to saudi arabia. All of a sudden it is a disagreeable situation so the guy doing his job gets fired. My question is, where are the checks and balances . With having these guys if you dont disagree with them and you can have them fired . The president does have the right to replace appointees. The checks and balances comes in ig act, her the 2008 or she must give the rationale for pushing the person out to congress. The notion is that congress would deliberate and could push back. This is where the balance of power comes. Explanationd 30 day is critical. Expect thatt gress would ask questions the notion of independence is that the Inspector General should have the ability to deeme whatever issues they within the responsibility of the Inspector General. This is really key. We do not want to have a Chilling Effect that other Inspector Generals are going to be afraid that they will get fired or worse have their reputation sullied. It is a dilemma. We need congress to step up. Host from florida on the independent line, stephen. Caller thank you for taking my call. My viewpoint has been that the media is influencing the listener in such a way that the Inspector General has an opinion that is skewed in such away or criticized such a way by the left and right that those opinions dont seem to be clear, factual, and not described in an unbiased way. For, if io and to is say to and to good before, no whoever is in charge of the conversation is changing our citizens viewpoints or trying to. That not purely the fact we are not seeing everything behind the scenes. There are always innuendos. I am not sure how the Inspector General would be considered nonbiased by both sides. That is a great comment, a great question. Generals have power simply because of the power of the evidence they provide. There are government auditing standards that are set by the Government Accountability office and they set clear standards in terms of how the Inspector General does their work. Their integrity and the credibility of the evidence they provide to support their findings and recommendations is absolutely critical. I advised the caller to go to any federalof Inspector General agency and download a report. You will see that the actual reports, the findings are supported by evidence and they are very clear to read. They cannot control how the media or pundits on websites make of the findings or how they spend the findings. Spin the findings but if you look at the work undertaken by Inspector Generals you will see that the evidence is very clearly aligned to support findings. The Inspector General and their office newcomer,erine somewhere off of that with he asked the question, what did president obama do with george bushs Inspector Generals. Can you apply that to how incoming administrations treat those in the position from the Previous Administration . Guest in general Inspector Generals last across the administrations and many have. As i mentioned, the reagan misstep is the exception rather than the rule. That hadpector general been appointed by a republican or democrat started acting partisan and inline with any kind of partisan or skewed kind of perspective, they would definitely lose their credibility. They would not be able to be effective. , whoever generals assumes these roles they figured this out very quickly. If they are going to have an impact, and our research every Inspector General we interviewed we asked what success looks like. Every single one said that they would improve the agency and make longterm sustainable rudiments in the ways the organization operates. The investigations are only one part of the full scope of the work of Inspector Generals. Thate that is them is them getting the press and what has gotten the attention of the current president. Host from massachusetts, joe, good morning. Caller she seems to be skirting around all of the questions about the firing of Inspector Generals. Obamad like to know why fired 93 Inspector Generals in his first three years and that seems to be ok and she seems to be going around the question that everybody is asking, why is it ok for certain president s to fire Inspector Generals. Thank you very much. Guest thank you for your question. Only one Inspector General that was asked to resign by obama. Theas the head of incorporation for National Community service. There have not been that many firings by president s. Flurry why this current of firings of Inspector Generals or acting Inspector Generals or deputy Inspector Generals is getting so much press attention. It is not at all the case that president s fire. There was only one that obama fired. Hard to sayck it is whether somebody was actually fired or asked to resign, but there were not 93. There arent even 93 Inspector Generals, there are only 75. Host from missouri, richard is next. Guest i was wondering about this Inspector General business. Under a dictatorship like we are living under now they are useless. You have the head dictator then you have his flunkies in the and what everybody else wants to do they cannot do because you cannot get through the senate. The rest of the senators are not doing anything. Always thought we had a great government with honest people, not hiring their relations. It is a different world i am living in now. Host ok, caller. 2 there is guest i encourage you to look at reports that are open to the public on every Inspector General offices website. In the last fiscal year they save the government 50 billion in savings. They sent over 4000 investigations to the justice departments to pursue. They made hundreds of recommendations, most of which were actually implemented to improve the operations of government. Work are many people that and are going to work every day in Inspector Generals offices making great efforts to improve our programs and policies. Despite the fact that our media pays attention to the politics at the top, in fact, there are literally 14,000 people that are going to work every day in Inspector General offices and doing great work. Putting their heads down and working despite the flurry of news. Host what is the process of removing and Inspector General . Guest as you know there are two different kinds of appointments of Inspector General. Some are the president ially appointed and need Senate Confirmation, about three dozen. Appointed bye their agencies, or in the case where there is a board like the smithsonian they will be appointed and they are civil servants. They are definitely not at all political. If anybody ish applying for a Senior Executive job in government they would apply. , clearly inding either case, whether or not they are hired by their agency or there is a Senate Confirmation. Clearly Senate Confirmation is grueling and can have a very Chilling Effect to scare off people. It is tough, for either side. The appointment process is are thisd there is something we point out in the book. Anre is no one that gives annual performance appraisal to an Inspector General. They dont have a boss other than the two main masters, congress and the agency head. They are not the answer. They they will get cut out, and they do. So while they may not be fired, there had been Inspector Generals who have been asked to resign or did not make the vetting process because of problems. Agency, and the smaller agencies without president ial appointments, they can certainly ask for the resignations of igs. If the vetting process of front works, there are not as many of the other end. Paul from indiana. Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I am retired now but i spent 25 years as a government auditor. Time, i found that the Inspector General, him or herself was a person of relative unimportance. The important persons with the three risible deputies for auditing, inspecting, and investigations. The inspectors general tended to come and go. I think i remember the bush period, they might have been five or six different inspectors general, i am sorry two or three. It was the Previous Administration where there was more. But they were basically a flashing shield. They set no policy, they directed no audits or investigations, they signed no reports. They reported on no reports. They were basically figureheads and had very Little Information influence. Also the inspectors general personnel stationed in washington often had a much more role. View of their own i often attended classes with counterparts in the state department. The were convinced in 1991 u. S. Would have a hard time beating saddam hussein. So, the people in the state department seem to think it was their job and that other civil debt goodrnor whitmer afternoon. Todays tuesday, may 26. Im joined by dr. Calhoun, dr. Martin, associate professor