Congress Announces That They Are Going To Start Auditing Welfare Recipients It appears that Congress is finally taking action and is preparing to investigate President Obamas Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to reports from The Daily Caller, the investigation is designed to audit HUDs financial statements. The precaution comes after the departments inspector general claimed that their own audit revealed that records may be inaccurate or potentially corrupt. This audit report contains nine material weaknesses, eight significant deficiencies in internal controls and six instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations, the inspector general wrote in his audit. Those are a lot of red flags, especially for an agency that receives $49 billion in annual funding. While Congress should force the agency to mop up this new accounting mess in the short term, in the medium term, Congress should devolve and privatize activities such as housing finance, Chris Edwards, the CATO Institute tax polices director told reporters. Given HUDs history of waste and outright corruption, this is an agency that Congress and taxpayers need to keep a particularly close eye on, he continued. And it is one reason why the new revelations of the agencys mismanagement are so troubling. Fortunately, Congress is not backing down. They intend to conduct an audit of their own and more closely watch financial transactions coming from the department. These are multi-year issues involving HUD and the committee will continue its oversight responsibilities, Sen. Richard Selby of the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a statement. What do you think? Is Congress making the right move, or should they be doing more? 