Oversight in your inbox
Weekly newsletter and updates
Latest Policy Publications
POGO’s experts push policymakers to enact commonsense reforms that tackle waste, corruption, and abuse of power; hold those who’ve violated the public trust accountable; protect our constitutional rights; and make the government work for all people.
-
Report
Taxpayers Carry the Load: The C-130J Cargo Plane Does Not
Attempts to reinstate funding for the C-130J program are nothing more than another scheme to keep on the table a plate of federal pork cooked up by a defense contractor and force-fed to the Pentagon by Congress.
-
Report
The Politics of Contracting
There is a revolving door between the government and large private contractors where conflict of interest is the rule, not the exception. Within the government contracting system, individuals move seamlessly between government and contractor positions, potentially subverting t...
-
Report
Federal Contracting and Iraq Reconstruction
Recently, policymakers, the media, and the American public have inquired about Iraq reconstruction contracts. What most people do not realize is that those contracts are not anomalies - in fact, they simply reflect the flawed federal contracting system that exists today. Favor...
-
Report
Congressional Research Service Products: Taxpayers Should Have Easy Access
$81 million of tax-payer money funded the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in FY 2002. CRS authors products at the request of current Members of Congress, many of whom become lobbyists, but CRS products are made difficult if not impossible for the public to access. CRS als...
-
Report
Nuclear Power Plant Security: Voices From Inside the Fences
Security guards at only one of four nuclear power plants are confident their plant could defeat a terrorist attack, according to interviews conducted by POGO for this report. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulates the utilities operating nuclear power plants. The ut...
-
Report
Big Dreams Still Need Oversight: Missile Defense Testing and Accountability are Being Circumvented
The Department of Defense is cutting testing requirements and financial oversight of the missile defense program, one of the most technologically challenging and expensive Pentagon weapons programs ever. History has demonstrated that cutting-edge defense initiatives, lacking o...
-
Report
A Partial Approach to Clean-Up: EPA Mishandles Superfund Investigations
This report focuses on the Industrial Excess Landfill, a Superfund site in Ohio, in order to investigate the success of the EPA's Superfund program in accomplishing its mission.
-
Report
Federal Contractor Misconduct: Failures of the Suspension and Debarment System
Many of the U.S. government's largest contractors have been found to have repeatedly broken the law or engaged in misconduct, according to POGO's investigation. However, they are never even temporarily suspended, let alone debarred, from gaining additional government contracts...
-
Report
Fill ‘Er Up: Back-Door Deal for Boeing Will Leave the Taxpayer on Empty
Using back-room political tactics, Congress in December 2001 authorized the U.S. Air Force to lease 100 Boeing 767 converted tanker aircraft. Not only would a lease deal cost the taxpayers billions of dollars more than purchasing the tankers outright, it would likely have the ...
-
Report
Pick-Pocketing The Taxpayer: The Insidious Effects of Acquisition Reform
In the 1990s, corporate lobbyists mounted an offensive against what they saw as an overbearing government system of buying goods and services. Most of the reforms they sought, however, unraveled useful taxpayer protections created during the infamous defense contractor scandal...
-
Report
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security At Risk
This report presents the results of an eight-month investigation initiated when more than a dozen insiders contacted POGO with unclassified evidence that the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear bomb complex is vulnerable to terrorist attack.
-
Report
Is the Air Force Spending Itself into Unilateral Disarmament?
With its ever increasing commitment to complex, expensive, high-tech weapons and willingness to advance the cause of defense contractors, the Pentagon is on a path that will actually degrade U.S. fighting forces. For example, at the start of the cold war, America's long-range ...