Money: Easy come, easy go
The country is technically broke because we spend more than we take in. However, that doesn’t stop the bureaucrats from wasting millions of dollars on conferences that were nothing more than party time for the participants.
The latest disaster is outlined in an IG report that documents the spending of $50 million over the past couple of years for 220 conferences that include learning to line dance and using Star Trek as a teaching tool.
Then the administration has the gall to complain about sequestration and its mouthpieces go on national TV news programs to bemoan the cuts forced on the government by Republicans, ignoring the fact that it was the president’s idea – he introduced it and he signed it but it’s not his fault.
It seems nothing is the president’s fault except when it can enhance his political ambition.
His top staff doesn’t tell him of scandals in the Internal Revenue Service, no one informed him of the AP fiasco or Fox News reporter James Rosen being branded a possible co-conspirator in a national security leak incident.
And best of all, while Americans were getting killed in Benghazi we still do not know what President Barack Obama was doing or his whereabouts for the seven hours of the terrorist attack.
As with any organization, the tone and character are set by the people at the top.
In the government’s case it appears that it is out of control and the people don’t give a damn.
How could supervisors possibly think that what went on at the IRS and the General Services Administration was not an abomination and should have been stopped or better yet never begun?
This waste, I am sure, has gone on in other administrations but that does not vindicate the present regime that came into power stating it would change things from how they used to be done for decades.
That has proven to be a bigger lie than the check is in the mail.
Last year, I believe, there was a Government Accountability Office report documenting waste and fraud amounting to roughly $200 billion.
Why then should we give the government more revenue when they cannot spend what they get efficiently and honestly?
No business would give managers more money if they are shown to be ineffective and incompetent stewards who lose the company’s money time after time. Yet we are to believe that if we give the government more revenue that somehow it will magically transform them into effective managers. Why should we give our hard-earned money to people who spend millions on frivolous parties and feel-good meetings that accomplish nothing but spending taxpayers’ money with no return at all?
Len Tria, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill and is a former Hernando County commissioner.
