Among the reports awaiting the newly elected 111th Congress was one from its investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office. The subject matter was eye-catching: fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in federal spending programs.

The federal government now spends about $3 trillion a year on all sorts of programs, some of which lend themselves more easily to problems.

For this kind of report, government investigators look into the spending programs and identify what they call high-risk areas. In its previous report, presented to the 110th Congress in 2007, there were 27 high-risk program areas listed, and one more, “planning for the 2010 census,” was added later.

Some of the programs are old favorites — the evergreens and golden oldies of fraud, waste, and incompetence. Medicare, Medicaid, tax collection, and defense contracting … the same spending programs that seem to find their way into the news with discouraging regularity.

This report is entitled, “High Risk Series: An Update” and unsurprisingly still includes the original 28 programs. Three new areas have been added, though, and the first of them indicates that the investigators are expanding the scope of their work.

The new type of high-risk area they now identify is “Modernizing the Outdated U.S. Financial Regulatory System.” The report says: “The current regulatory approach has significant weaknesses that if not addressed will continue to expose the U.S. financial system to serious risks. Determining how to create and implement a regulatory system that reflects new market realities is a key step to reducing the likelihood that our nation will experience another financial crisis similar to the current one.”

Few people would argue with that diagnosis. Still, tackling this kind of issue is a bit of a stretch for the agency. The financial system and its markets are not a significant area of federal government spending programs. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the largest of the federal agencies overseeing the stock market, is not huge by government standards. And while its inaction over the past few decades (and especially in the past three years) raises questions of competence, there have been no significant allegations of fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement — the core of accountability office’s investigative work.

It’s not that the agency’s views on the regulation of financial markets are unwelcome. Still, we don’t usually look to our forensic accountants for ideas on economics or business strategy, and there is a good reason for that.

The Obama administration, though, has already announced that it wishes to redo the financial market structure and expand the federal government’s regulatory powers over markets. Congress needs to bring itself up to speed in this area, and there has been precious little said or written — by economists or anyone else — about the best way to go about creating and regulating financial markets so that they would be less prone to excess, corruption and crashes.

It is not surprising then that they would turn to the accountability office, but that still doesn’t make it a good idea. And it certainly raises the risk of politicizing an organization whose impartial analysis has been the source of much-deserved reputation for integrity. The reason that anyone pays attention to the accountability group now is that it is a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of group — and that is both valuable and very much needed at this time.

Once the agency jumps into broad regulatory prescriptions for the future, though, it becomes just another voice, indistinguishable from all the others in Washington, D.C. And worse, if their suggestions were adopted it would put them in the position of auditing their own programs.

Instead of asking the investigators to jump into a new area, it would be a far more productive use of their time if they took a hard look at the economic stimulus legislation business. The latest, $850 billion economic stimulus package, for example, is less a stimulus bill than an oversized version of a standard, off-the-shelf government spending bill — GAO’s home turf.

Two types of spending in the bill lend themselves to what economists call inefficiencies. The first is spending in new technology areas such as alternative energy. This is undoubtedly going to involve some waste, and we need keen eyes and sharp pencils to make sure that that some waste doesn’t turn into total waste — which can happen.

The second type involves overloading the recipient’s management system. Some of the $850 billion destined for schools, for example, represents a major expansion of their capital budgets — far more than their tracking, accounting, and management systems can easily absorb. Without close monitoring, the odds of waste and worse rise to unacceptable levels.

Analyzing, monitoring and evaluating government spending programs is what the accountability office does best, and it should stick to that.

James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes a monthly column for the Snohomish County Business Journal.