Carson wants secret shoppers for federal agencies

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said Wednesday that he would like to deploy secret shoppers in an effort to improve the federal government’s performance.

“I believe in the secret shopper concept for all government agencies,” he told The Des Moines Register’s editorial board.

{mosads}“I believe there should be people out there who are acting as consumers and seeing if we are taking care of them appropriately,” Carson continued.

“You don’t have to have very many people,” the retired neurosurgeon added. “You just have to let the people know that they could be out there.”

Carson then listed examples of the problems that secret shoppers could expose.

“When you have a problem and you go to the Federal Housing Administration and you talk to somebody and it takes you four hours before they blow you off and you don’t get anything done, I want to know about those kinds of things,” he said.

“I want to know what can be done about those kinds of things. The American people should not be subject to that.”

Carson cited “extreme political bias” in universities as another area ripe for investigation.

“Institutions of higher education are supposed to be there for just that – higher education,” he said.

“When we’re talking about federal taxpayer dollars going to an institution that is educating our children, I don’t care if the political bias is coming from the right or the left,” Carson continued.

“You have to be able to discuss everything. These are people who are going to be leaders in our society. They cannot be sheltered.”

Carson’s remarks expand upon his suggestion last fall that the Department of Education monitor America’s colleges and universities for “extreme political bias.”