Remember this from Senate Minority Leader [score]Chuck Schumer[/score] regarding Dr. Ben Carson’s confirmation as the next HUD secretary?
I have serious concerns about Dr. Carson’s lack of expertise and experience in dealing with housing issues. Someone who is as anti-government as him is a strange fit for Housing secretary, to say the least.
Or the comment by House Minority Leader [score]Nancy Pelosi[/score] (D-Calif.) in which she dismissed Carson a “disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice.”
Or this critique by Sen. [score]Sherrod Brown[/score] (D-Ohio), the top Democrat on the Senate’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee: The country “cannot afford a HUD Secretary whose spokesperson said he doesn’t believe he’s up for the job.”
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
These are just a few of the love songs Democrats sang publicly when Dr. Carson was being confirmed. Just about every who spoke criticized, belittled, or demeaned him and President Trump for choosing him.
But it turns it out wasn’t Carson they should have been worried about. HUD was already being run poorly by the Democrats’ chosen leaders.
In a shocking report from the Daily Caller, we learn that HUD’s financial situation had been so totally mismanaged that it was impossible for the Inspector General (IG) to actually figure out what happened to the agency’s money.
Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) financial books are in such bad shape that HUD’s Inspector General (IG) can’t complete an audit even after HUD officials corrected $520 billion in bookkeeping errors.
Officials at HUD fixed $3.4 billion in errors from its 2015 books and $516.4 billion in errors from its 2016 books after the IG in December was unable to issue an opinion on either year’s financial statements and highlighted 11 material weaknesses, seven significant deficiencies and five instances of failure to comply with laws and regulations.
These same problems have been reported for three straight years by the IG.
Here’s what the IG found, according to the report:
The total amounts of errors corrected in HUD’s notes and consolidated financial statements were $516.4 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively. There were several other unresolved audit matters, which restricted our ability to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to express an opinion. These unresolved audit matters relate to (1) the Office of General Counsel’s refusal to sign the management representation letter, (2) HUD’s improper use of cumulative and first-in, first-out budgetary accounting methods of disbursing community planning and development program funds, (3) the $4.2 billion in nonpooled loan assets from Ginnie Mae’s stand-alone financial statements that we could not audit due to inadequate support, (4) the improper accounting for certain HUD assets and liabilities, and (5) material differences between HUD’s subledger and general ledger accounts. This audit report contains 11 material weaknesses, 7 significant deficiencies, and 5 instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations.
Even after allowing the agency to work on its problematic ledgers, the IG was still unable to resolve all of the problems with its books. This means that Dr. Carson’s first task isn’t to get about the business of helping the people HUD is meant to help. No, his first task is going to be solving the problems created by Democratic mismanagement.
Interestingly enough, the man who couldn’t figure out how to balance the books at a minor agency like HUD is actually a rising star in the Democrat Party and someone Democrats hope will one day lead their party. His name is Julian Castro, and one wonders: If he couldn’t handle properly running HUD, how can Democrats hope he does better on a larger scale?
Cross-posted at Constitution.com
