Show our ur government jovern ment plow how it operates by william Br ackart CHECKS AND DOUBLE CHECK la Is a classical story extant T therb here about a man who was retired aft after er some ome forty years of government be service arvic only to be notified two years lit later tar that his accounts showed an unnamed n amount still due him he made numerous trips to the building where he had bad been employed and eventually was told that his claim had been approved it was a month or so later before he was paid but he surely was paid the check being for a total of three cents though that may seem to be an exaggerated ag case it actually Is not out of the ordinary your uncle sam watches pennies closer I 1 dare say than most of us he has to do it the government la Is approximately a five billion on dollar business its records are and have to be exact to the penny had dad the circum circumstance of the three cent incident ment mentioned mantione ione d above been favorable to uncle sam the amount would have been collected even had it been necessary to sue in court and obtain a judgment the necessity for maintaining such a close watch on the pennies Is the reason why there Is a general accounting office the comptroller general of the united states who Is head of the gene general r al accounting office mee never has the go good od will of all offices of the government at one time the nature of hla his job makes popularity impossible he ha is required by law to tread on too many toes lot let we me illustrate how in doing his job the comptroller general gains so much disfavor he passes upon every payment that Is made out of federal funds every penny that Is appropriated by congress has to he be spent according to the letter of the law and the comptroller generals genc rals job Is to see that the several hundred disbursing officers of the government do it that way it takes no stretch of the imagination therefore to understand that when a disbursing officer makes a payment me nt and a nd then is told by the comptroller com P general a few weeks later that the payment was not in accordance with law well it is the exception rather than the rule when that decision falls to produce an argument you probably would argue too if you were held liable for the gove government rement rn ment it Is not alone with the disbursing officers that the comptroller general has troubles he meets individuals to whom ae disbar disbursing sing officers offic officers ets go to get back bach their overpayments over payments and frequently they demand reconsideration over payments may result in the purchase of supplies for the government in the payment of salaries in the settlement of general claims or in such things as refund of expenditures paid by governmental ern mental representatives laws require for instance that an individual traveling at government expense must take the most direct route picture then what the reaction Is of an individual who Is informed weeks after lie he had bad made a trip that if he be had taken the proper train or boat the expense to government would have been IW less and that he must pay back that sum out of his own jeans you select your own language and I 1 will match it with expressions I 1 have heard because they cover the whole category of epithets but all of this is necessary or else the government would be the loser not in thousands of dollars but in millions annually government supplies are costly the appropriations for them are astounding if there was no check on the way the money Is spent it Is easy to understand what would happen the tarp taxpayers would be called upon to furnish more money so congress arranged a long time ogo ago to have an auditing system for all government accounts it was not because it feared dishonesty among the workers there Is very little of this in the government but the laws lawa are intended to provide for expenditures and if those laws are not carried out chaos naturally would result there had to be a central authority therefore for checking all the payments this brings about uniformity of interpretation of the laws and assures orderly conduct of payments payment s by the government no one doubts the propriety of such a course thus every check that Is made out by any government disbursing officer anywhere sooner or later finds its way through the r regulation eu channel some call it red tape to the scrutinizing eye of the comptroller general whose assistants numbering scores determine whether the payment was proper the magnitude of this job of auditing becomes apparent when it is known that rulings from the general accounting office average about thirty per week or about five each day and that these arise from examination of about two and one half million checks a month fit C ac 1932 32 western union |