The scandal concerning the Government Services Administration (GSA) has been getting a lot of airplay recently. In GSA district 9, they had a conference to reward a number of employees for…well, for something. Maybe they were exemplary employees selected from the rank and file. Maybe they were the senior managers, taking advantage of a boondoggle. Anyway, the conference, hosted in Las Vegas, was apparently pretty over the top. They spent about $822,000 for a conference with only a couple of hundred attendees
The GSA’s own internal auditor raised the issue in a report. Then it hit the media. Once the story broke, it picked up steam all on its own. The head of the GSA has now resigned. Congress is investigating. The head of district 9 pleaded the 5th when called in front of a congressional committee. Politicians of both parties are hyperventilating, declaring that they are “shocked, shocked to discover gambling is going on in this establishment.” Oh, sorry, wrong movie.
The politicians are appalled over this waste of government money. The government? Wasting money? How can you tell?
The people who worked at the hotels where the conference attendees stayed don’t think it was a waste of money. The entertainers hired don’t think it was a waste of money. They entertained the hell out of those bureaucrats!
The people whose businesses were supported by the GSA’s largesse don’t think it is a waste of money. They probably think that continuing to support a war in Afghanistan and bribing the Pakistanis to allow supply convoys through their territory is a waste of money. They might think that extending Federal unemployment payments to people who aren’t working is not as good a use of the government money as paying people to actually do a job. Maybe they think that having Medicare pay for medical services for people who die shortly thereafter is a waste of money. But I really doubt whether the folks who provided goods and services for the GSA’s conference thought that they were a waste of money.
Seriously, the government takes in wealth through taxation, and then redistributes that wealth. Some wealth is spread around employees of the government, and most is redistributed among the populace.
In holding this conference, the GSA was redistributing wealth. You could make an argument that they were doing their job.
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The sentiment is similar to one's household budget. If your monthly budget is in the black, then the husband usually does not complain about the new, expensive dress the wife just bought, but, if the budget is underwater or in the red for the month even a purchase at Goodwill is frowned upon. We are 16 trillion dollars in debt! It is time to balance the budget!
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