Official Takes Blame For Passport Mess

(AP)  The current passport mess is rare among government foul-ups: A top federal official has publicly taken the blame and expressed regret.

"Over the past several months, many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that," says Assistant Secretary of State Maura Harty, who is in charge of passports for U.S. citizens. "I accept complete responsibility for this."

In an effort to thwart terrorists, the government implemented new rules on Jan. 23 requiring more Americans to have passports. By summer, more than 2 million Americans were waiting for passports; half a million had waited more than three months since applying for the travel identification that historically has been ready in six weeks.

The massive backlog has destroyed summer vacations, ruined wedding and honeymoon plans, disrupted business meetings and educational trips. Individuals have lost days of work waiting in lines or thousands of dollars in nonrefundable travel and lodging deposits. And Congress has been overwhelmed as constituent pleas for passport help soared from dozens a year to hundreds a month in many offices.

The culprits have variously been identified as inept planning, underfunded preparations, popular misunderstanding of poorly crafted government advertising, unanticipated effects of public debate over immigration, tardy and ill-considered responses to the developing crisis, and even partly on Hurricane Katrina, which damaged the New Orleans processing office.

Some in Congress wonder if the effort hasn't actually harmed security. Others question whether more passports actually contribute much to security at all.

[kansas1946]

The current passport mess is rare among government foul-ups: A top federal official has publicly taken the blame and expressed regret.
****************************
No, this isn't rare. Another Bush adminstrator taking the fall for Bush's stupidity. Mr. Get-Tough-On-Americans allowed this law to go through without any thought, fore-thought, planning, or, common sense. This isn't rare. It is just par for the Bush Whitehouse course.

[bustardo]

Effing cry babies. If people had requested their passports in a timely manner, this would not have been the problem it became. This plan was announced months before it went into effect. Could the govenment to better? Of course, but be real, don't expect a passport to be completed in a few weeks.

[crater7]

HEY FOLKS, JUST THINK HOW MANY TERRORIST PLOTS THIS ADMINISTRATION HAS PREVENTED BY NOT ALLOWING AMERICANS TO GO ON THEIR HONEY-MOONS TO CANCUN ETC. I FEEL SAFER ALREADY.
STAY THE COURSE.

[coffeehead-2009]

I find it quite refreshing.

xxxxxx

I find it quite "telling"...


"What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security ...
To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted.
Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. "

German professor after World War II describing the rise of Nazism to a journalist

[slim1h2o]

I said A.s,s, hole jerks.

[slim1h2o]

Hey I know - apply for dual Mexican citizenship and then you won't need a passport at all to cross the US border, since you'll be Bush's and Pelosi's special little amigos who are like them above the law. Lot cheaper to bribe some scummy Mexican crooked cop than the $85 for a passport anyhow.

And maybe I can get my SS that I've paid into the last 37 years,...... that they won't give me since I've been disabled. *** Jerks

[sharncedar]

Hey I know - apply for dual Mexican citizenship and then you won't need a passport at all to cross the US border, since you'll be Bush's and Pelosi's special little amigos who are like them above the law. Lot cheaper to bribe some scummy Mexican crooked cop than the $85 for a passport anyhow.

Did any government officials take the "blame" for that mess, oh I guess not. I guess they are still doing right now. As hard as they can. Still giving out fraudulent L-1 and H-1 visas as well to companies like Tata, who use the visas to train workers for offshore placement, a clear violation of rules for both h-1 and L-1 categories. But this little tramp didn't take the "blame" for that, did she now, but rather for somephony snafu about the passports being slow. This is another cynical political move from an outrageous government, like apologizing to your wife for forgetting her birthday when you were really caught having an affair or plotting to kill her.

These government types make me sick, so really sick.

[jacksteen1]

The "buck" didn't stop anywhere. This low-level appointee was TOLD to fall on her sword and take the heat.

She'll be rewarded with a lifetime gig at the nearest office of Halliburton after this administration starts to feel the indictments closing in on them.

[deepperppl]

It's nice to know the buck stopped somewhere on this snafu. Not often you see a gov't employee admit doing something wrong. I find it quite refreshing.

[lastdance2]

Looks like that low life :

Weekend : CBS News Management
is back.