This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 8th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Inspectors General are supposed to keep massive federal agencies abiding by the law,

not engaging and corrupt practices, and generally following the programs within their purview.

This president has fired some inspectors general of agencies and in doing so has shown himself

less amenable to oversight than his predecessors.

Will Yeatman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, says it's a dangerous series of moves,

and Congress should do more to check this president.

Republicans for the most part, I think, have grudgingly accepted a whole lot of what the president

has done and said over the past three plus years as president.

And it seems like we may have crossed a line in which more Republicans are willing to say now

hold on a second there chief executive we've got a problem with what you're

doing specifically Chuck Grassley. The president has fired Inspectors General from multiple agencies and that has gotten the

hackles up of Charles Grassley. So what, if you could, just characterize the controversy?

Sure. First, just a step back. What are Inspectors General? They're these, consider them like the internal affairs of Congress.

I mean, the movie with Richard Gere, these sort of people embedded within an agency whose job is to root out and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

They're created by statute and their job is to inform in large part Congress.

I mean this is a function of Congress's investigatory powers.

Congress creates these agencies, Congress funds these agencies,

and the Inspectors General are a mechanism by which Congress oversees these agencies.

Of late, President Trump has fired or moved within the administration, but moved them from this particular post, five of these inspectors general.

And not all of, not all of these removals were a big deal. Not all of them were caused political problems if you will.

...