Michael Lisagor's crystal ball for 2009
From Obama appointees to FEMA, find out what his predictions are for the government in 2009.
This is the fifth year I have looked into my crystal ball.
One would think that after so many years of accurate prognostications, the naysayers would run out of steam. But I soldier on:
- Chinese government cyber warfare experts will penetrate a key Internal Revenue Service database — and will be flagged for an audit.
- New political appointees will spend their first year getting up to speed, their second year changing high-level policy stuff, their third year realizing they were wrong, and a fourth year putting things back the way they were.
- As federal workers retire, more management contractors will be hired to oversee development contractors, who will team with small-business subcontractors, who will rely on expert consultants to recommend other vendors, who will have hired retired federal workers with generous pay raises.
- Upon being told that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided to make first-responder identification card standardization voluntary, many state and local governments will volunteer to ignore the initiative.
- A new White House team will review programs for waste and inefficiency and will find a lot of both — like always.