My Big Gubm’nt Agency (BGA) has fucked up something in its spending and internal controls, which means we get to report a violation of law. Was telling the boy about this yesterday evening, because it’s been dragging on for months now as we investigate, but we finally met with several senior managers and came to agreement that it is indeed a violation and so we have to report it per statutory and regulatory guidance. And somehow I got tasked with writing the first draft of the letters, which have to go to the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate (aka the Vice-President), the Comptroller General and the President himself, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Whee! Thankfully I’m not the one who will sign his name to the letters – someone much, much higher in the BGA gets to be that lucky stiff, but I have to write the majority of the story here.
The funny thing was that I didn’t consider this any big deal, it’s just part of my job. An annoying part, to be sure, but just part and parcel of working as an attorney for a BGA, practicing appropriations law. In mentioning that I had to write the letters, and who they’re going to, the boy did a double take, repeated the recipient list (with the phrase “you have to write letters to…”), and gave me a shocked look. I suppose it doesn’t help that he’s been watching the entire run-through of the show The West Wing lately, so he’s had politics on the brain.
It’s hard not to become jaded about such things, since they are part of my job, albeit a rare part. But it was interesting to see the reaction from someone who doesn’t live and breathe politics in his daily life.