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jean d'addario. he served as the united states comptroller general. what does a comptroller general do? guest: my responsibilities are to lead the government accountability office which is an independent organization and a legislative branch of government. our job is to support the congress, and help carrying out their contras -- our constitutional abilities and ensure the accountability of government for the american people. we are independent, non-heart -- nonpartisan. we are -- host: how do you carry out that mission and ensure accountability? guest: we do this through a series of audits. we will do 600 audits, everything from the development of weapon system to the provision of medicare services across the full spectrum of the federal government's responsibilities.

we audit the financial statements and we do these performance audits warm-up -- mostly what we do to see if programs are delivering on their expectations. they could be made more efficient and effective to provide better services to the american public. we try to make government more efficient and effective. we also try to make sure that it is delivering on its public safety responsibility, national security, homeland security, etc. host: use the term efficient and people immediately think the government -- the government, doge, is it the arm of the legislative branch? guest: the doge is in the executive branch and they could carry out activities and make decisions. whereas in our job, our job is to advise the executive branch. and advise the congress. most of our recommendations are implemented by the executive branch voluntarily. over 75% of our recommendations,

we will make over 1200 recommendations a year. we saved billions of dollars every year through the implementation of our recommendations by the executive branch and by the congress. host: what is the high risk list? guest: it is try to focus the attention of the congress on our oversight responsibilities. it is also helpful for the administration, a new administration coming in, that highlights what we think to be the greatest risk of fraud, waste, and abusive mismanagement in the government. and also points for the last several decades, the areas needing transformation. in other words, they need to change their missions, they need to adapt to modern challenges for the 21st century. it is a combination of both of those things. that we help focus on. host: there is 37 high-risk areas, according to the high

risk list that was put out by the gao. viewers can go to the website and find this report themselves. here are some examples of what gets listed on this list. dod weapon system acquisitions, enforcement of tax law, ensuring the national cybersecurity managing federal real property national flood insurance programs. start with the weapon systems acquisition because that is an area for folks who have paid attention to the high-risk over the years, that has been on this list for decades. you are still saying to congress, this is an area that is at high risk of waste, fraud and abuse. guest: yes. the main area, it is one of our charter members when we started the list back in 1990. medicare was another one. in this area, we have seen over time some progress, and we have reported progress. but still, the weapon system still take on average major

systems, about 10 years to develop. they are developed usually at costs much higher than they are originally estimated, and they tend to be schedule delays later. so the war fighters don't have them as soon as possible. we have made a lot of recommendations to implement best practices in these areas. we have seen some improvements. but now we are seeing continual problems. in fielding this this has gotten more sophisticated over the years, with more software intensive weapons systems, more sophisticated weapon systems. we have looked at how some of these things should be developed and best practices. host: we know what the problem is and you have offered ways to fix the problem. whose fault is it that this has been on the high-risk list for 35 years? is that congress not having the desire to fix this problem? guest: it is primarily because of the department of defense is not consistently implementing

leading practices that we suggested. they have adopted these changes in their policies and procedures. we are encouraging them to do more. we have updated the leading practices and we are encouraging them to do more. they can't seem to consistently apply these practices. one of which is to not put things into production before the design is complete and before it is tested. they are under a lot of pressure to develop these systems because of their competition from china and others. they need to be more deliberative about the practices, and to make sure that they stay with things over time. there is a lot of turnover there of project managers. host: what is the poster child for wasteful defense department system development. what is an example? guest: there are a couple. the navy, they have had problems

with the frigate that they are developing right now. the navy has had challenges. the f-35 programs, the most expensive weapon systems in the history of our country. despite all these years, it has casted more than they expected. it is not being able to be used as much as they would like to have it used for those that are deployed already. and there are spare parts shortages. those are among the ones that we have singled out over time. host: we are going to go through more of these high-risk areas. the high-risk list at the gao. it is available at gao.gov. gene dodaro, the comptroller, here with us until our program ends at 10:00 a.m. easter. -- eastern. we can talk about these areas, talk about the gao.

, democrats. (202) 748-8000, democrats. (202) 748-8001, if you are in the mountains or pacific. another one is the enforcement of tax law in the united states. why has that been something that has been on for 35 years now? guest: there is a gap between taxes owed and taxes collected every year. hovering between 82 and 85 percent. the latest estimate of the irs is there is a net tax gap of $606 billion. that is an annual figure. the most recent one. there is a lot of underreporting, there are people that report and don't pay. and then there is the segment of people who don't file taxes at

all, but should be filing taxes. the irs needs to have a better enforcement strategy to close that gap so the government gets its fair share of revenues that it is due. this is particularly important because of our fiscal sustainability on the long-term, which is not good. and made a number of recommendations to get the government on a more sustainable long-term fiscal path. there is overspending in improper payments as well. the other problem the irs is having has been because of identity theft. there are a lot of people that steal identities of legitimate taxpayers that have been filing returns. they get the payments back from the irs. we made a number of recommendations. one was to expedite the information on w-2's from employers to irs. the irs was going to give it to individual taxpayers at the end of january. in the past, it had not given the employees until march and

april. they needed it to compare to their return. since that has happened, the irs has been able to forestall billions of dollars and identity theft. still, some get through and they still need to focus on that. host: let me do another high-risk area. managing federal real property. guest: there has been a lot of excess government property around for a long time. it has been accentuated now because of toll work during the pandemic. a lot of the buildings are older. they were built in the days when you use to have paper files, and need a lot of room for that and administrative support. the computer -- computerization of a lot of things has changed dramatically. the buildings are good for current workforce.

host: one of the examples was a government printing office. they have a huge building on capitol hill, because they use to have huge printers where they would print out the congressional record. then it went digital and there was all of the space in that building where they didn't need that footprint anymore. guest: right. you can replicate that across government. a lot of it is happening here the government has not had an efficient way to dispose of property that they did not need. the congress passed legislation to create a separate board to expedite that. it has not really worked really effectively. they have not been in sync with gsa and opm about the disposal of these properties. that is a problem. host: brac commission for the military side? is there such thing as a brac for federal? guest: that's what this legislation was for, to create this commission that was separate from the government. they were to identify properties

that could be sold. they had to turn the list over to omb and gsa. they then had to agree and execute on the list. often, they did not agree. as a result, there were not that many properties disposed of. there is a last round growth -- going on right now. but this is a big problem. one thing that we have got them to do is to get out of a lot of costly leasing over time. they need to continue to improve that. the deferred maintenance on these buildings have grown extension will he. there's also security concerns, another reason they are on the high-risk list. if we did testing of trying to get through items through the security guards, and we were able to be successful, this is with batons and other sharp instruments. the security of the buildings needs to be there as well. but there is a huge opportunity here to save a lot of money by getting rid of some of these

buildings, consolidating agencies and buildings and getting rid of costly leases. host: gene dodaro is our guest taking your phone calls. he is the comptroller general. also known as the government accounting office. how many folks work at gao now? guest: 3600 people. we have experts in every aspect of the federal government, health care environment, transportation, etc. we have a lot of technical experts as well. we have also built our capacity in science and technology areas. we have a chief scientist now, about 160 or so scientists that focus on artificial intelligence, quantum computing. we use them for looking at the refurbishment. we need to have people have nuclear engineering. some of the weapon systems are nuclear based. host: gao, hasn't seen any staff

cuts with everything we have seen from doge in the past month? or will it if not? guest: it depends on where the appropriations end up for this year. fortunately, congress has asked us to expand our capability into the science and technology area. we have been having pretty good stability in our staffing at this point. i'm hopeful that remains the case. we are being asked to do a lot more as the government's activities continue. we have been asked to look at the department of efficiency. so we will be looking at their access to the information systems, many of which we audit because they are payment systems. host: do you have any early thoughts on doge? guest: as someone who has spent a decade -- butting heads with the bureaucracies across the federal government, there is the opportunity for great deficiencies and effectiveness.

it would be better to do it by identifying what functions you need to get rid of first to figure out how you want to shape the staffing. i don't think with eliminating groups of employees, i would not consider that the best practice of how you would want to go about it. host: let me get you some calls. alex's up first in washington, d.c.. good morning. you are on with gene dodaro. caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to provide my experience. the use work for the department of defense. i admit -- i listen to him talk about implementing better business practices. that is a good recommendation. but i think fundamentally, the issue is a business can fire employees who don't perform and remove leaders who don't perform. the government can't do either. the problem that you run into is

you can write a bunch of papers about good ideas but at the end of the day, if you have people that are not able -- are not able to implement those changes, they will not have it. the way that the bureaucracy is set up is that it is a big network, where all of these are -- these nodes are dependent on these other nodes. all it takes is one or two bad leaders, or just bad departments and the whole thing grinds to a halt. tickets to a situation where a good chunk of the organization knows the department is terrible or this leader is terrible, and can't get rid of them for years. that's why i think a lot of this stuff about encouraging better business practices is performative until you are willing to remove people that don't do a good job. you need people that are able to be there and say, hey, if i'm not doing a good job or we are not making any positive change for the country, then we need to go in a different direction. host: let me take your point on

that. guest: it's a fair point. and i think always, people -- leadership is important. you have oversight in this area by congress. i do think there is a problem at the defense because they rotate people through a lot. people don't stay through the entire development of the weapon system process. people are coming in and out of the process. we also have continual changes in the political leadership across the government. every time there is a change in the administration, there are at least 3000 people across the government who are then replaced by new people coming in. the average tenure of political appointees is only a couple years. there is a lot of churn their. your point about holding people accountable is exactly right. that is what we try to suggest to the congress in making changes and recommendations.

our recommendations are always to the leadership of the department. host: is it too hard to fire a federal employee? guest: not if you document their performance effectively. i have been able to do that at my organization. it takes work. you have to set expectations clearly. so that you can judge their performance. and you have to be willing to give them early notification that they are not performing well. document it well. and then you can go forward and remove people. i'm not saying it's easy. but if you are a good manager, you should be able to do it. host: toledo, ohio. this is sue waiting. you are on with gene dodaro of the gao. caller: yes, thank you. i was calling in, i thought we were still in the last conversation you are having before you added this gentleman. but i will say by listening to him, how he praises the people

in his part of the organization as highly skilled and people we need to solve these problems. why are his people so much more important and more skilled than all of these other people? they are just slashing out of these jobs. and the way the congress and i heard marjorie taylor greene one day say that these people don't deserve to even be treated like human beings because somehow, they have infiltrated our government and collect paychecks , where every civil servant helps this country with their specialties. it's work that they love. and we are just going in and eliminating them without -- i'm sorry. host: let me take your point. guest: thank you for that

observation. that is a very astute one. one of the advantages we have at the gao, since we are in the legislative branch, we have our own personal authority. we are independent of the office of personnel management. and anything in the executive branch. we also at the gao, the comptroller general, the head of the organization has a 15 year term. and can only be removed by an act of congress. impeachment or joint resolution. we have a lot of independence, we run our own operation. our attrition rate is only 4%. people stay at the gao, they become experts in all of these areas. now, as it relates to what is going on at the executive branch, i'm very concerned. i have been in the gao over 50 years. i have met thousands of federal employees over those years. most of them are dedicated.

they are trying to do a good job. they didn't cause this deficit. they didn't structure the organizations the way they have right now. i think they need to be treated with more respect. than they have been so far. the elections have consequences. there is a need for more efficiency. we need to go about it in a way that achieves those objectives and treats people with dignity and respect. host: a 15 year term. does that mean you're term is up this year? guest: that's correct. host: and you be reappointed for another 15 years? guest: no. even if i could, my wife would not let me in the house if i did it again. host: how is the next comptroller general picked? guest: there is a commission that gets formed as soon as there is a vacancy in the position. the speaker and the house, the majority and minority leader, the chair and ranking of our oversight committee.

the senate, pro tem, minority leader, senator of homeland security chair and ranking. they come up with three or more names. they do an executive search. three or more names go to the president, the person has to be -- the president picks, the person has to be confirmed by the senate. host: just about 20 minutes left. gao.gov and you could search through all of their reports on that website. i encourage you to do that while listening to this segment. especially the high-risk list. the high-risk list released a 37 high-risk areas in the federal government. one was added this year. a lot of these carryover year-over-year. it is the new member of the high risk list. explain. guest: everybody would agree we are having more severe and frequent weather events. in the last 10 years, it has cost the federal government over $500 billion. to provide assistance to the disaster areas.

fema is stretched way too thin. the federal emergency management organization. they are managing right now over 600 disasters. some of them go back 20 years because it takes a long time for the recovery phase to kick in. a lot of the -- a lot of people focus on the initial response, but the recovery. there are over 30 different federal agencies involved. requirements are different for each agency. if you want to build infrastructure, you could go to the federal highway administration, go to hud and fema. they all have different rules. our recommendation is we need to improve the delivery with the -- of disaster assistance. a lot of insurance companies are not insuring some of these events, like fire insurance. we have seen that happen with the proliferation of wildfires. the flood insurance program -- host: another congress lit area.

guest: that is not actuarially sound peer the flood insurance program owes $22.5 billion. host: $22.5 billion? guest: that's after congress in 2017 forgive $16 billion in that program. that needs reform as well. our whole disaster response as -- does need reform in light of these recent severe events. they are expected to continue. the government could do better in this area, and i think the survivors would agree. host: dave, michigan, you are next with gene dodaro. caller: good morning, can you hear me? host: yes, sir. caller: ok. i'm listening to mr. dodaro and i have to say i'm really encouraged by this man.

he speaks with such a level head. i just want to know when there are people like themselves, there were inspector generals of all the other different departments. and he has spoken a bit to make me already feel like my question is answered. but here it is. simply, what is the need for doge at all? guest: first of all, with -- announcer: this is in our video library. we will leave it to take you to the pentagon where pete hegseth met with his british counterpart here on c-span three. >> this your secretary, your entire delegation is welcomed to the pentagon. it's great to see you. it was wonderful to meet you the first time in brussels and