The Trump administration is pulling a federal watchdog off the beat in Washington, effective Wednesday, stripping funding from the Council of Inspectors General.
Removing the council’s funding will mean a further hollowing out of the work of federal inspectors general and internal government investigators who are supposed to root out waste, fraud, abuse and misconduct in the administration.
The council, which is an independent entity within the executive branch, is tasked with addressing “integrity, economy and effectiveness issues that transcend individual Government agencies,” according to the council’s website.
The Trump administration argues the inspectors general are “corrupt.”
“Inspectors general are meant to be impartial watchdogs identifying waste and corruption on behalf of the American people,” a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget told CBS News in a statement. “Unfortunately, they have become corrupt, partisan, and in some cases, have lied to the public. The American people will no longer be funding this corruption.”
The council, often referred to as CIGIE, helps train, equip and provide investigative expertise to the dozens of federal inspectors general. Its staff helps operate hotlines for tips, hosts websites for the inspectors and provides data analysis and investigative tools to help with probes. CIGIE helps support nearly 14,000 federal investigative employees, according to a former CIGIE official.
Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector general for the Interior Department and a former CIGIE chair, posted a statement Tuesday warning about the impact of the cuts.
“Without this infrastructure, I fear the individual inspectors general will be isolated, their effectiveness diminished, and their ability to protect taxpayer interests severely compromised,” Greenblatt said.
CIGIE also helps review possible misconduct by federal inspectors general themselves, in a “policing the police” type of mission. Greenblatt alleges the organization is being defunded because of its prior review of a federal inspector appointed during the first Trump term.
Mike Ware, the former inspector general for the Small Business Administration, says the council’s defunding could cripple the ability of federal watchdogs to monitor the administration’s actions. Ware said nearly 30 inspectors general offices depend on CIGIE to host their websites, which he says are “essential for transparency and public accountability.”
“It would also dismantle critical cross-agency collaboration by eliminating shared data analytics platforms that help expose waste, fraud and abuse,” Ware said. “Just as concerning, it would strip away the training and professional development infrastructure that sustains the 14,000 oversight professionals dedicated to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.”
The move has raised rare, bipartisan criticism. GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Susan Collins of Maine criticized the Trump administration’s decision, writing in a letter this week, “Absent immediate action, (CIGIE) will need to furlough staff and terminate important functions that help prevent and detect waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the government.”
In their letter, Grassley and Collins said, “We urgently request an explanation for these actions and ask that you to promptly reverse course,” in order to allow CIGIE to continue its “important oversight work uninterrupted.”
The two Republican senators, in an unusual rebuke of a decision inside their own party, have asked the Trump administration to hand over records and answers about the cuts by Friday.
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