Walker, Fiscal Ranger

U.S. Comptroller General David Walker was the featured speaker at Government Executive's Leadership Breakfast this morning, in what could be called an unofficial stop on his Fiscal Wake-Up Tour. (For full details on Walker's presentation about the impending fiscal crisis, see this GAO publication.)

In addition to plugging his appearance in a new documentary, I.O.U.S.A., which played last week at the Sundance Film Festival, Walker offered a few other observations:

• On the lack of attention to the country's looming fiscal problem: "If it was well understood, people would do something about it."
• On the political process: "Congress is a committee, and you can't run a country by committee. We're a long way from what the Founding Fathers intended."
• On the need for reengineering federal programs: "Government in many cases is based on conditions that existed from the 1940s to the 1960s."
• On oversight of federal operations: "The problem in government is not fraud, but waste. It's huge, and getting bigger."