In the State Department’s Agency Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton writes in the introductory “Message from the Secretary”:

“We take seriously our duty to spend taxpayer dollars effectively, invest in our nation’s long-term success, and make our work transparent to Congress and the American people.”  (page 2)

A labyrinth with glass walls is still a labyrinth.

That same financial report states the State Department’s budget rose 29% ($11.3 billion) between FY 2008 and FY 2009.  Good luck finding where that $11.3 billion went.

The sheer number and volume of State Department and Government Accountability Office (GAO) documents is dumbfounding. The State Department’s own documents are scattered around its website.  If you have a budget question, you have to find out if it is in an Executive Budget Summary, a Budget in Brief, or an Agency Financial Report (they are different things).  Each one is between 130 and 180 pages.

The GAO, meanwhile, has 150 reports on the State Department dating from January 2008 to August 2010.   The grand total is just shy of 7,000 pages (two reports only have summaries posted online).  If one reads twenty-four hours a day at twenty pages per hour, it would take over two weeks to read all that.

The State Department issued 2.7 million fewer passports in FY 2009 than in FY 2008 (down 17% from 16.2 million to 13.5 million).  Want to find out why?  Want to find out if the State Department spent more money or less money processing passports in 2009?  Since January 2009, the GAO has written nine relevant reports (229 pages).  Topics range from vulnerabilities in passport issuance processes to the surge in demand for visas and passports in Mexico.  One report from June 2010 is entitled “Current Situation Results in Thousands of Passports Issued to Registered Sex Offenders.”  By the way, at least 4,500 registered sex offenders were issued passports during FY 2008.  Hopefully some of the State Department’s budget increase is going towards fixing that little problem.

The State Department “makes its work transparent to Congress and the American people,” but how can we ever be sure?  If their work were less than transparent, one would have to read thousands of pages to prove them wrong.

One of the most egregious examples lately, particularly for New Yorkers, is the case of the Ground Zero mosque and its chief proponent, Imam Rauf.

As guest radio host Mark Steyn recently pointed out on the Sept. 2 edition of the Rush Limbaugh program, this use of tax dollars is especially confounding; especially when Mayor Bloomberg says he doesn’t want to investigate the funding for the proposed Ground Zero mosque.

"O.K., so why don’t we investigate the funding for Imam Rauf’s lousy book?" Steyn said. "According to Human Events, the State Department acquired three thousand copies of Imam Raufs book “What is Right With Islam” at a cost of nearly $10,000. Under something called Cairo Regional Book program, the state department Hands out hundred of copies during his visit to Egypt last January and to his current three-country tour that he’s on at State Department expense."

This tendancy of the U.S. to throw our tax dollars at hostile third world countries or other groups in the name of public outreach has not yielded much in return, except for some major headscratching.

Another example would be USAID, an agency of the Federal government, spending $250,000 to put up outdoor billboards to convince Israelis that they have a peace partner in the Palestinians.  "We are talking about a Palestinian Authority campaign funded by the American government," said an Israeli Foreign Ministry official. "We are talking about a Palestinian Authority campaign funded by the American government," an Israeli Foreign Ministry official was quoted saying.