Transparency....

Throughout the first half this weeks assigned reading in the Rubin text I could not help but focus on the issue of accountability and transparency of records. Legislation like Gramm-Rudman-Hollings unintentionally encouraged creative bookkeeping and after the 2002 expiration of the Budget Enforcement Act practices became less open yet again. With the utilization of Ad Hoc committee and creative scoring and rule changes that made deficits look smaller to justify policies and tax cuts. I think I am really just hung up about how publicly traded companies are now “held to higher standards of record keeping” than the government enforcing them. Through the Sarbanes Oxley Act that was passed in 2002 and signed by President G. W. Bush companies were held accountable for the accuracy and completeness of corporate financial reports. I see the exclusion of Defense Department from the budget although it received approximately 75 billion dollars in funding in 2005, which occurred under the same Bush Administration (Rubin, 119) that felt the need for people to trust financial records. Public budgets are public record of government finances but how much of the general public would be able to make sense of anything through thousands of pages of legislation and gimmicky accounting practices let alone trust it. Does this seem like a double standard to anyone else? States and local governments have moved more towards line item vetoes to truly invoke accountability as well encourage transparency. I guess that would make the national budget seem more trustworthy and less like things are being pushed under the rug. At the same time I understand that that’s a lot of Presidential power, and well we all read about how wonderfully Nixon used his power with the impounding. I may be comparing apples and oranges but it just seemed a little sketchy.