Balance of Power

It doesn’t sound like a runaway success, but the panel didn’t come right out and say so. And that’s where the importance of clear goals comes in. If Treasury had put out one set of clear and consistent goals for the auto bailout, the panel said, it would have been easier to measure how well or how poorly the bailout is going. But since Treasury has given lip service to three different goals at different times, the panel basically threw up its hands and said it can’t tell whether the record is better or worse than overseers should have expected it to be.

The three possible goals, according to the panel, were to prevent a broader threat to the economy because of the companies’ collapse; to advance social policy goals, such as preventing greater job losses or stabilizing retirement benefits; and/or to keep the U.S. auto industry alive at a respectable level.

But while Treasury has talked about all three goals at one time or another, “it is unclear which objective, or combination thereof, Treasury deems most important — or if all three carry equal weight,” the panel concluded. “As such, in the absence of a clearly articulated unifying strategy, it is difficult for outside observers to determine which metrics are the best indicators of Treasury’s performance.”

Of course, it could be that the panel just didn’t want to take a stand and that blaming Treasury for a lack of transparency was a convenient way to avoid the issue. Still, taxpayers generally do like to have clear goals when their money is being spent. And it can’t just be one presidential speech that sets out those goals. The department that’s in charge of the program has to be able to explain those goals too, in a clear and consistent way.

So when President Obama makes his case tonight for a critical but potentially expensive makeover of the health care system, he’ll be under pressure to explain exactly what he wants. But the same will be true for the lawmakers writing the bill and the agencies that would implement the new law, too. The clearer the goals are, the easier it will be for the overseers to measure how successful the overhaul is.

And it wouldn’t hurt if the public knows what to expect, either.