The Public Service

inished with his two-year investigation of campaign finance and liberated from the impeachment scandal, Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., recently announced that his House Government Reform Committee intends to hunt down "problem child" federal agencies as part of a new attack on fraud, waste and abuse. The hunt is likely to produce more heat than light.

It is no surprise that the House would return to the fraud, waste and abuse theme. The House has been waging war on waste for the better part of a half century. It was the House that launched the blockbuster investigations of welfare fraud in the 1970s, procurement and housing fraud in the 1980s, and Medicare fraud in the 1990s. And it was the House that created the first statutory inspectors general by merging dozens of lower-level audit and investigation offices into quasi-independent junkyard dogs.

Nor is it a surprise that a Republican lawmaker might return to the theme in the wake of the impeachment debacle. Fighting government waste is one of the few areas where Republicans still maintain an advantage over Democrats. Republicans lost their edge as the party best able to manage government several years ago when Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government program began closing the once formidable gap.

Burton's problem is that there is far less fraud, waste and abuse in government than there used to be. He can use all the fiery rhetoric he wants, but most departments and agencies have made substantial progress in reducing their vulnerabilities.

Medicare fraud, for example, is down from $24 billion in 1996 to less than $13 billion today. "We don't pretend we have solved this problem," Health and Human Services Inspector General June Gibbs Brown said at Burton's first hearing in early February. "$12.6 billion is still too much money. But what we're saying is we have turned the corner."

Burton is likely to find that most "problem child" agencies are in trouble because of, well, their neglectful congressional parents. It's been 20 years since Congress made a serious effort to fix the civil service system. And reform was built on ideas that were 20 years older still. It has been even longer since Congress took a look at the government organization chart, laden with needless bureaucracy, antiquated systems and fuzzy missions; or reformed its own committee structure, which has done more than its share to convert well-behaved agencies into problem children. If Burton wants to know why packing plants are regulated by the Agriculture Department, while cattle feedlots are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, he need look no further than that committee system.

There may be hope yet in Burton's effort, however. He is quite right to invite the inspectors general to offer their ideas for reform. After all, the House created the IGs in part to provide just such advice. Unfortunately, the IGs spent most of the 1980s looking for statistics that President Reagan could use to attack big government and becoming experts on creating what one IG called "the visible odium of deterrence," instead of building the tangible products that prevent waste. The reason Medicare fraud is down is that Brown chose a different path, focusing less on catching Medicare cheaters and more on how systems could be reformed and legislation improved. She did so, in part, because of the strong support of HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, who recognizes that an IG is an ally, not an adversary, and who believes that an IG's criticism is not a personal attack. If only other department secretaries felt the same way.

Burton is right to ask how government agencies and employees might be rewarded for improvements. He even proposed a bonus system for employees who turn around particularly wasteful programs, saying that he could not see why someone who reduces waste by $500 million should not get a $1 million bonus.

Agencies and employees already know how they will be punished for their failures, of course: tongue lashings about poor performance, cuts in training budgets, and continued bashing in the press. But they will get no relief from the pressure to do more with less, and they will see little action toward fixing the presidential appointments process, flattening the government hierarchy, clarifying agency missions or funding state-of-the-art management systems. If Burton really wants to reward successful agencies, he should schedule a hearing on agencies and programs that work. How about a hearing on how the Social Security Administration went from an agency under fire in the 1980s to an "A" performer in the recent Government Executive grading project?

Burton launched his hearings by asking congressional staffers to rate agency responsiveness on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst. But Burton's "problem child" rhetoric rates a solid 10 itself. There are many ways Congress can help government become less wasteful, but another round of anti-government hearings is not the answer. Burton and his colleagues would be much better off asking how they could help agencies focus on higher performance in the future, not digging for dirt in the past.