Senator McCaskill sees too many government lap dogs that should be watch dogs. She’s introduced a bill that she says will give an important government official teeth.
It’s the first bill on which McCaskill is the lead sponsor. It relies on her background as a state auditor.
McCaskill wants to make sure Inspectors General in government agencies are non-political, independent, and have the power to make government accountable to citizens. She calls Inspectors General "the taxpayers’ first line of defense against government waste and inefficiency.
She wants to isolate them from political manipulation, require them to be independent of the agency they watch, and prohibit them from being political appointees. McCaskill says the bill would keep any Inspector General from being fired because he was doing his job. She points to a former Inspector General who says he was fired because then-Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge did not like the critical reports he was issuing about the agency’s operations. McCaskill says the former Homeland Security I-G was called a "traitor" and "turncoat" in the agency and was fired for doing his job.
Similar legislation has been introduced in the House and some other proposals in the Senate include some of the ideas in her bill.