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WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are paid more than their job descriptions say they are worth, a new government study suggests.Minority workers are more likely to benefit from these pay distortions than white workers, concluded auditors for the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm.But women were more likely to be underpaid than men when their actual work was compared with official pay standards.Among the explanations: Many supervisors pushed federal workers into higher pay levels than their jobs justify, investigators suspect.

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators said yesterday that the Bush administration had improperly allowed states to divert federal money from the Children's Health Insurance Program to provide aid for childless adults, shortchanging children in some states. Senators said this practice violated the intent of Congress, and they vowed to stop it if the administration did not. Health care experts said states were stretching the children's health program beyond its original purpose because they were strapped for money and had many people without insurance.

WASHINGTON -- The federal government has collected just $365,000 out of $83.6 million in court-ordered fines and restitution from individuals convicted in the nation's top savings and loan fraud cases, the General Accounting Office reported yesterday.The finding raises questions about the government's effectiveness in recovering funds stolen or misappropriated by corrupt thrift operators. Hundreds of S&L failures nation wide, many linked to fraud, are expected to cost taxpayers more than $500 billion over 40 years.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, a nonpartisan government investigation has put principal blame on Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not lower-level officials, for the fumbled response to Hurricane Katrina. The Government Accountability Office, an independent investigative agency of Congress, said in its preliminary report yesterday that Chertoff had failed to move quickly to mobilize resources despite advance warnings that Katrina was likely to be a devastating storm. And, the report said, Chertoff's failure to name a single individual to spearhead the response was a prime factor in the delays and confusion that followed.

WASHINGTON -- The latest survey of what Americans eat was so badly bungled that federal agencies may not have the data they need to regulate everything from school lunches and food stamps to food labels and pesticide exposures, a new congressional report concludes.The 1987-1988 Nationwide Food Consumption study, conducted by the Department of Agriculture, did not interview enough people, its design was flawed and it lacked adequate quality controls, according to a report by the General Accounting Office.

WASHINGTON -- Goddard Space Flight Center is failing to collect on many of its debts, has lost track of millions of dollars in government property and is spending more than it is supposed to because of shoddy accounting methods, according to a recent congressional report.Goddard, in Greenbelt, about 30 miles south of Baltimore, has also levied surcharges on other agencies, in violation of federal regulations, for work it has performed for them, said General Accounting Office investigator Donald R. Wurtz, who led the probe.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Postal Service is plagued with so many chronic financial, operational and labor problems that the government-owned monopoly must be overhauled quickly in order to survive, according to a government audit prepared for a Senate hearing today. The findings by the General Accounting Office are expected to add momentum to efforts in Congress to restructure the $67 billion-a-year Postal Service in the wake of threats by the government-backed enterprise to end Saturday mail delivery and raise postage rates to avert bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's breakneck effort to field a rudimentary missile defense system by 2004 is moving so fast that the Pentagon may end up with unworkable hardware that needs to be redesigned at a steep cost, Congress's independent watchdog agency warned yesterday. In the first official, unclassified challenge to the administration's plans, the General Accounting Office said in a report that the Pentagon's use of new and little-tested anti-missile technology puts the program "in danger of getting off track early and impairing the effort over the long term."

Programs meant to ease the hardships on military reservists and their families don't go far enough, threatening the viability of the National Guard and Reserves even as the country increases its reliance on them, says a congressional investigator leading the first major survey of reservists' pay and benefits since the Sept. 11 attacks. Derek B. Stewart, director of military and civilian personnel issues at the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said yesterday that his researchers have found serious shortcomings in programs to help reservists with finances, health care, family support and relations with their employers.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun about an inadvertent Pentagon payment of $751 million incorrectly attributed the information to a GAO audit of the Army. The information actually came from a GAO audit of the Department of Defense.The Sun regrets the error.WASHINGTON -- The military payroll system is so badly managed that the Army inadvertently paid $6 million last September to 2,269 people who had already quit the service, were absent without leave or had deserted their units, congressional investigators said yesterday.