You're reading the special April Fools' Day, 2008, edition of The Watcher.

The Bush administration and congressional leaders agreed to begin negotiations over the Clean Waterboarding Act of 2008 that Congress passed April 1. The key sticking point is the administration's objections to leaving the responsibility for implementing the act to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to Congress, EPA is the agency that sets U.S. water quality standards and is therefore the most appropriate agency to ensure that, if domestic sources are used for waterboarding, the water is "clean." The administration wants the Justice Department (DOJ) to have the authority to implement the act because DOJ has the legal responsibility for justifying other torture tactics, and the agency can oversee the use of waterboarding in international settings. Since President Bush has stopped short of threatening a veto, an agreement with Congress is expected soon.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was blasted in both judicial and congressional forums for closing seven of its libraries over the past several years. In a Feb. 15 ruling, a federal arbitrator found EPA guilty of unfair labor practices with respect to the closings. One month later, Congress heard testimony from several sources, including the Government Accountability Office (GAO), that EPA's library restructuring plan was poorly conceived, planned, and implemented.

On March 13, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight heard testimony concerning the 2008 tax return filing season, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) operations, the Fiscal Year 2009 budget proposals, and the National Taxpayer Advocate's Annual Report to Congress. Then-Acting Commissioner of the IRS Linda Stiff testified, and Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, pressed for reforms that would both protect taxpayer rights and improve tax enforcement.

In a recently released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined ten years of supplemental spending (FY 1997-FY 2006) and found not only a five-fold increase in the amount of expenditures funded through the supplemental process, but also that procedures that enable legislative deliberation are bypassed when Congress funds government operations through supplemental spending. Supplemental spending has become an alternative funding process, parallel to the normal annual appropriations process. This allows certain expenditures to elide close congressional and public scrutiny and allows Congress to escape debate over federal funding priorities.