Issa: Oil Spill Sign of Government Failings

Temecula’s congressman blamed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on government corruption and waste.

Darrell Issa, R-Calif., commended the Government Accountability Office for adding the Minerals Management Service to a list of government agencies most prone to abuse. The agency was in charge of overseeing offshore drilling operation during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

“It’s better late than never, but it shouldn’t have taken the worst ecological disaster in history for GAO (the Government Accountability Office) to place this program onto the high-risk list,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

Issa pushed to reform the agency in 2006 when he investigated it as the head of a subcommittee. Only a few months before the spill, he proposed separating the agency from the Department of the Interior to make it easier for legislators to track.

Issa chose to point his finger at the failure of a government agency rather than blame British Petroleum, the private company responsible, said Paul Jacobs, a Temecula activist.

“Issa’s not representing the people. He’s representing oil companies,” he said.

The congressman’s known for opposing regulations, but the oil spill is a prime example of the cost of his laissez-faire approach to business, Jacobs said. “We can’t trust businesses to self-regulate. Look at Enron. Look at Wall Street. Look at BP.”

The congressman called a meeting for tomorrow of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Issa is the head of the committee. They are set to discuss the Government Accountability Office’s new list, which includes 30 areas of government in need of reform.

The Minerals Management Service was the only new addition to the list, which is amended biennially. The list will work as a blueprint for the committee as they look for ways to cut waste and root out abuse, Issa wrote.

The Government Accountability Office pointed out 50 agencies in need of reform since 1990, and since then, more than one-third of the businesses made enough changes to get off the list, according to the office’s report.

Determining how much money is lost to waste each year is difficult, but the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates 7 percent of the government’s budget is spent fraudulently. Based on this estimate, the government lost $228 billion last fiscal year.

The participants in the meeting will include government officials, anti-waste group members and representatives of big businesses. They plan to brainstorm on how to cut waste, according to the congressman.