Treasury secretary promises green, sees red

Treasury Secretary John Snow may be seeing red longer than he anticipates.

In an interview with National Journal in May, Snow replied tersely to a question about why Treasury earned red lights (a failing grade) for "financial performance" under the President's Management Agenda scorecard.

"We're addressing it," Snow said. "We're continuing to address it, and I think the next time that report comes out, you'll see us getting green lights rather than red lights."

But when the White House issued its third-quarter report in July, it showed that Treasury had kept its red lights, and is not even getting green for its progress toward fixing the reds.

A department spokesman said that it may be years before Treasury removes the red, because the department is responsible for the persistent flaws in the accounts of the other federal agencies that write checks on the U.S. Treasury -- including the notoriously negligent Defense Department -- and the millions of tax collection transactions handled by the IRS.