An era of scrutiny

Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

David M. Walker has announced he will resign March 12 from his post as U.S. comptroller general, a position that made him chief of the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO was created in 1921 as a nonpartisan entity charged with reviewing how the government spends its money. Congress uses GAO data, recommendations and testimony in making its decisions.

Under Walker’s guidance, the GAO has provided crucial and often critical reports and testimony on such important issues as health care spending, Social Security and the Iraq war.

For example, it was the GAO that documented the woeful lack of government oversight in the federal assistance offered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And its auditors drew sharp criticism from the Bush administration for a September report that said the United States had failed to meet most of its Iraq reconstruction benchmarks.

It also was the GAO that, in 2001, said the Defense Department’s proposal to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was tainted by a “failed scientific process.”

From revealing the vague language in loan documents that helped fuel the current mortgage crisis to government computer system glitches that left personal information unprotected, the GAO has helped to provide Congress and the American people with a candid view of government’s shortcomings. Such knowledge is the first step toward solutions.

Walker has ridden herd over these investigations, butting heads with Bush administration officials who refused to cooperate. He is leaving five years short of a full 15-year comptroller general’s term to take the helm of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank dedicated to finding solutions to what it calls “key sustainability challenges” such as energy consumption and shrinking funding for entitlement programs, health care and education.

We hope the next comptroller general who would be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate will possess the kind of unyielding thoroughness and perseverance that Walker brought to the GAO.