The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1944-04-28

necessarily stolen" but GER
tainly after it is dead.
In contrast to this $50, 900, GOO
undertaker's bill. how much is
spent on doctor bills TO keep the
horse from dying and police
work to keep the horse from
being stolen? Next year it will
be about S2,5O0,0O0. That is
roughly the appropriation for
the Bureau of the Budget, whose
less than 800 employes-as COM
pared with the $4,000 General
Accounting Office employees -
are given the job of not only
preparing but also pairing fed
eral agency expenditures.
All most people know about
the Bureau Of the Budget is that
once a year it prepares what is
probably the biggest and dullest
book in the world. 1t is the an
nual estimate of expenditures
which the President sends up to
Congress each January with his
budget message, and which no
one ever looks at again if he can
avoid it.
But that is only a smidgin' Of
the Bureau of the Budget assign
ment. Its dayin- and-day-out job
- the thankless task which
brings down on the heads of all
Bureau of the Budget examiners
the curse of the bureaucrats
who call them paper-clip coun-
ters, penny pinchers, unprogres-
sive reactionaries and worse -
is the business of cutting back
and holding down on govern
ment agency requests for ap-
preparations before they 60 to
Congress, and then in checking
the programs of the agencies
after they get their money.
BY July /, which is the be-
ginning of the government fis-
Cal year, every government
agency must present to the Blu
reau of the Budget its proposal
on how it proposes to spend its
appropriations. A similar pro-
posal must be made every three
months, and every month there
must be a report on money ac-
tually spent.
In addition, under the Over
time Pay Act, every three
months there must be a check
on the number of employees in
every department, job by job, in
an effort to keep bureaus from
becoming overstaffed and per-
forming a lot of useless func-
tons. But only about half of the
100000 federal jobs today are
SO inspected.
CHECK AND DOUBLECHECK
All this inspection work for
the whole sprawling federal ma
chinery is supposed to be done
by a staff of l25 examiners" as
they are called, plus a special
staff of 20 engineers in a war
projects unit, set up to check on
the government huge construc-
ton program. Every agency is
supposed to have its own audit
and control but these examiners
are the key men in the govern
ment's present system Of inspec-
ton. They are not auditors. They
go beyond that in that they may
determine whether an agency
should do what it wants to do.
In addition to these examin-
ers, there is staff of about 10
men in the Bureau of the Bud
gets section of administrative
management, which is supposed
to check into and improve pro-
cedures, take out the red tape
and put efficiency into govern
ment operations.
To the taxpayer, there may be
some consolation just in know
ing that this goes on. But that
there isn't enough of it, admin
istrative officials in the Bureau
of the Budget will freely ad-
NIT. And there, perhaps, you
have one reason for a lot of the
congressional special investiga-
tions. which in themselves cost
almost as much money as the
Bureau of the BUDGET