During last week’s celebration of Richard Cordray’s confirmation as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,President Obama said, “The financial sector was able to make huge bets with other people’s money. And that strain of irresponsibility eventually came crashing down on all of us.”

That same statement could easily apply to the federal government

Just like the banks and credit card companies now being patrolled by the CFPB, Washington has trillions of dollars at its disposal and complex forms that are almost impossible to decipher. It might make you wonder why Washington doesn’t have a single agency to monitor and expose government waste and mismanagement of our tax dollars.

In fact, we have several. There are 73 inspectors general at different federal agencies. The White House contains an Office of Management and Budget that looks for ways to cut costs. The Government Accountability Office also checks expenditures. And so do legions of congressional staffers who are eager to help their bosses score political points.

But none of their scolding seems to work. Politicians always campaign on the vague promise of reducing federal bloat, yet their pet interests, lack of cohesive leadership, or lack of financial management skills usually enable the excesses. When a new report identifies wasteful spending, someone always tends to say, “It’s a mere $600 million, or, “It’s only $1 billion—a rounding error” compared to the $3.8 trillion that makes up the Federal budget.

We can see your eyes rolling over yet another federal agency! But think about an agency with teeth—one led by a sole director with decision-making authority who does not depend on congressional appropriations to survive. For any shred of waste, it could extract penalties from those agencies. This is what the CFPB does. The IGs at the Pentagon and Treasury Department tend to audit bureaucratic “processes,” pick up pieces of the financial paper trail and submit recommendations.

The piecemeal nature of these IG reports diffuses their impact. More importantly, some financial audits are never done, prompting the GAO to designate the Department of Defense, which is responsible for more than half of all federal discretionary spending, as “high risk” for government finances. The DOD is not alone: Add to this list in 2013 the IRS, Homeland Security, NASA, federal disability programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and dozens of others and you get the picture.

Taxpayers should think of themselves as “investors” in the United States government—the largest financial entity in the world. Would you hire a CEO of, say, Health and Human Services—with a budget of $700+billion a year—who had no management training and financial education? Probably not. Federal officials tend to be knowledgeable about bureaucratic processes, but not the kinds of common sense management practices that get taught at business schools.

If Congress created the ultimate government watchdog, one area that deserves a serious look is program redundancy. Last April, President Obama acknowledged the problem and proposed eliminating certain agencies that duplicated the work of others. USA Today reported, “Over the past three years, the Government Accountability Office found 162 areas where agencies are duplicating efforts, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.”

Last year, The Fiscal Times highlighted a GAO study that found:

• Eleven federal agencies continue to operate 94 separate initiatives to spur energy-efficient construction in the private sector.

• Nine agencies or departments lead programs to safeguard food and agricultural systems from natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

• Thirteen agencies spend a total of $30 million annually funding 15 separate financial literacy programs.

The study prompted Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to tell a congressional committee, “Today’s findings are a testament to failed congressional efforts of oversight and a reminder Congress continues to shirk its duty to address even blatant areas of waste and mismanagement of taxpayer funding.”

The Fiscal Times decided to look at annual wasteful spending and mismanaged funds, with the exception of massive war expenses which could not be time stamped. Since this was not a massive study, we probably missed a lot, and we included what some might consider one-time expenses—in particular those in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, what becomes clear is that billions of dollars – even in an incomplete snapshot – are going down the drain instead of being poured into infrastructure, education and other sorely needed programs and services.

“A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” Senator Everett Dirksen once said. So let’s see how we’re doing, almost half a century later.