The United States Treasury Department has played a significant role in the provision of government services to the people throughout American history. The history of the agency dates back to the early days of the American Revolution. This was the period during which the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, identified and attempted to resolve the issue of financial fallout following a war of independence from Britain.
The Continental Congress lacked the jurisdiction and capacity to levy taxes on American citizens. This has caused it to grow and evolve into a larger institution capable of meeting all of the nation's treasury needs. The United States Treasury Department was established by the Treasury Act of 1789. In its earlier stages of development, many of Federal Government’s functions are under the United States Treasury Department. Established in 1789 for executive functions, the agency’s duties were being done even before America got independence (Congress, 2007). The department is responsible for issuing all treasury notes, bonds and bills.
Functions
The United State Treasury Department has two major departments, that is, the operating bureaus and the departmental offices. The operating bureaus are responsible for carrying out specific functions assigned to them by the Department. On the other hand, the department offices are responsible for policy formulation and management of the agency.
The primary functions of the United States Treasury Department include:
• Supervision of all the banks operating in the United States.
• Production and monitoring of currency and coins.
• Carry out governmental accounting and debt and credit management.
• Collection and assessment of all the internal revenue and taxes.
• Policy formulation such as economic, fiscal and international policies.
• Enforcement and promulgation of taxes and laws concerning tax tariffs.
• Investigating tax evaders and punishing them.
• Publishing all the national finance statistics.
Mission
The department’s mission is to “maintain a strong economic and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable economic growth and stability at home and abroad, strengthen national security by combating threats and protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. government’s finances and resources effectively.”
Organizational Chart
Fig. 1: Organizational structure of the United States Treasury Department (About, 2017)
Agency Analysis
Strengths of the Agency
1. All the Treasury security by the USA government out of faith and credit.
2. The Treasury can mint new coinage to repay the government and public debts.
3. The Treasury can sell new Treasury securities at auction.
4. Policies formulated by the agency are final and precise.
5. All the Treasury’s internal budgets provide a cost effective way of promoting national security.
6. The treasure focuses on funding small business and local communities thereby supporting economic growth and creation of related opportunities.
7. The Treasure continues implementation of efficient and comprehensive financial reforms in the society.
8. It supports small business development through the creation of Small Business Lending Fund.
9. The Treasury stabilizes housing through Emergency Economic Act.
10. It encourages international economic growth through holding multilateral trade meetings.
Weaknesses of the Agency
1. There are high risks of poor investments the treasury faces.
2. The United States government s sometimes forced to take new debts to pay old ones.
3. The Treasury is not able to provide thrilling bonds between the bond issues.
4. The agency is not well prepared to protect significant information regarding the government debt and borrowing.
5. Agency officials do not have procedures in controlling risks on the Treasury secrets.
6. The Treasury is can subjected to many malicious acts such as fraud and fund misuse.
7. It also suffers power and function misunderstanding and management due to the many bureaus and offices.
8. The Treasury does not always account for all the revenues collected.
9. The Treasury has not managed to punish tax offenders.
10. Government debt and borrowing are always rising. The Treasury has failed in laying down the regulations to avoid this.
Agency’s Internal Operation
The United States Treasury Department several divisions that help in day-to-day running. These divisions and offices include:
Secretary of the Treasury
The secretary of the treasure is the legal policy advisor to the president. The department is responsible formulating tax policies, recommending all the government financials and economics, managing the national debt, and formulation of fiscal policies (John, 2003). The secretary is also responsible for overseeing all the activities in the treasury department thereby serving as the government agent in the agency.
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
This office was established on February 25, 1863. Initially, the office was a bureau of the Treasury Department. Its primary function is to control all the banks operating in the United States.
The president appoints the comptroller who serves one five-year term heads the office. The office is responsible for the supervision of all the national banks in the country. It oversees all its operations and entrusted activities.
Financial Management Service
Financial Management Service (FMS) mission is to improve and manage improving government finance. Therefore, FMS serves the Treasury Department, taxpayers, government policy makers and federal program agencies. By providing all the required financial assistance, advice and information through financial management objectives.
FMS being an office in the Treasure Department, it provides all the necessary programs that help in improving credit management, financial management, debt collection and cash management.
As far as service management is concerned, the office issues regulations and guidelines that help other agencies inn credit management. This helps in managing all credit activities such as loan servicing, credit extension, debt collection, and credit issuing and write-off procedures.
The service also assists its customers with guidelines and regulations that help in maximizing investment earning, financial transactions and reduction in loan interest tests. It also handles all the government payments. It supervises governmental receipt collection, maintains, and operates all the systems used for revenue collection.
The service can issue 426 million checks and above 408 million electronic payments annually for federal, payments, wages, income tax refunds, among other payments.
Internal Revenue Service
This service’s mission is to collect tax revenues in a manner that dictates the highest degree of public trust and confidence with fairness, integrity, and efficiency.
Internal Revenue Service aims at achieving a good degree of general compliance with the tax regulations and laws. To achieve this, the service holds general masses to educate people on the importance of tax compliance, consequences of noncompliance. It also determines the extent of conformity, enforces tax laws, and seeks good ways of achieving their mission.
Office of Thrift Supervision
Established in 1989, the office mandate include regulating the thrift structure. It serves as the regulator of more than 1700 state and federal –chartered thrifts that belong to Saving Association Insurance Fund. Its mission is to regulate all the saving associations to maintain a viable, safe, and sound industry thereby enabling the industry to achieve its housing and financial service objectives. Its mandates are supervising and examining all thrift institutions, supervising all holding companies, enforcing federal and state compliance laws, and controlling acquisition of thrifts.
Bureau of the Public Debt
The main function of the bureau is borrowing the money required in running federal government and raising new money to repay the borrowed one. The bureau can achieve this through its six programs. These programs are:
• Saving securities.
• Commercial book-entry securities.
• Government securities.
• Public debt accounting.
• Market regulation.
• Direct access security.
U.S. Mint
Originally referred to us as The Bureau of The Mint, the U.S. Mint’s main objective is to produce adequate coinage for the United States of America. With its storage facility at Fort Knox Bullion Depository, the mint produces and sells national medals, silver bullion coins, Eagle silver coins, and numismatic coins. These programs help in providing protection to investors while maintaining a safe market for all the government securities.
Responsibility and Experience
It is a section of financial statements and reports in the Internal Revenue Service. This section helps in making records of all transactions made by the agency be recording them in a set of books and computer accounting programs. The prepared financial reports contained all the financial data.
The reports prepared also contained data for clarity. All the reports prepared followed some basic standards. First, they were supposed to be clear and display all the essential facts. Those reports were prepared so that they can be stored for a long period.
Secondly, those reports were supposed to be available by the time set. They were to relate and integrate with others already prepared for consistence. These programs help in providing protection to investors while maintaining a safe market for all the government securities. (James, 1940).
Throughout the internship period, I was involved in preparing internal reports and statements. These are statements used for all the internal uses in the department. The reports and statements included:
• Daily fund position reports.
• Weekly fund position reports.
• Monthly-consolidated budgets.
• Monthly profit and loss statement.
• Departmental quarterly variance budget.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I acquired hands-on experience. I also acquired interpersonal skills on how to relate to other workers both in different levels of management ranks. I was able to put the theoretical class aspect I learned at school into practice. Finally, I was prepared psychologically as expected of me in the job market. I was also able to mark my best fields of interest in finance.
References
About. (2017, April 24). Retrieved from U.S. Department of the Treasury: www.treasury.gov
Congress, U. S. (2007, September 7). An Act to Establish the Treaury Department. Fraser Federal Reserve, pp. 1-3.
James, K. (1940). THE AMERICAN STANDARDS ASSOCIATION AND THE U. S. TREASURY DEPARTMENT. Science, 91(2368), 470-471.
John, P. (2003). Independent Treasury System . American Currency and Banking History, 4.
