GSA Wastes Thousands= Heads Roll, Politicians Waste Millions = Good Times Roll

I am always amused when politicians actually try to do their job and get all in a lather, especially when they are on camera during Congressional hearings. They are outraged, they want answers, they want copies of documents and emails, they want people fired, they want to know how the injustice under investigation could ever happen, yada, yada, yada.

Recently such an explosion of caring actually erupted within the political class. It is now pretty certain that regional employees of the Federal government's General Services Administration (GSA) threw themselves a lavish, over-the-top Las Vegas party that was thinly disguised as a business conference/convention. About $832,000 of taxpayer wealth was wasted on dumb team building activities, entertainment, food, etc. The most disgraceful part of the festivities were skits put on by Federal employees who mocked the very taxpayers who paid their higher than average Federal salaries and better than average Federal benefit packages.

Congressional hearings were held, political class outrage was expressed. People involved in the actual conference were fired or suspended from their jobs. Their leaders, who had no direct input or control over the perps, were also fired or suspended from their job for not being good supervisors and managers.

When it was all said and done, the politicians patted themselves on the back for a job well done. I, however, would disagree somewhat on their performance:

• Why did the political class and their roles of Congressional oversight not make sure this did not happen in the first place? Step 34 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would see that those politicians sitting on Congressional committees with GSA oversight would also lose their jobs, on those committees, for allowing this type of behavior and waste to occur in the first place.
• Why I definitely agree that the $832,000 was money wasted away and the people responsible be made to pay the price for their wasteful ways, is it possible that the showboating and Congressional hearings  looking into this episode of government gone wild actually cost the taxpayer more than the original $832,000 (politicians' time, staff time, testifying time, document preparation time and cost)? Was there no better and less expensive way to handle the the wasting of $832,000 that was more efficient and cost effective?
• Wouldn't the political class get a bigger bang for our buck if they showed such ardor and enthusiasm in going after the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security bureaucracies that waste over $200 billion a year of taxpayer wealth? The annual waste from these government entities is more than 240,000 times larger than the $832,000 wasted by the GSA. Their enthusiasm in dealing with this large pile of waste would be much more appreciated by the American taxpayer.
• Wouldn't the political class get a bigger bang for our buck if they showed such ardor and enthusiasm in going after the IRS and reasons why it is incapable of collecting the $385 billion a year that tax evaders get away with in this country? The annual loss from tax evaders is about 470,000 larger than the $832,000 wasted by the GSA.

Yes, it was good to go after the GSA perps who wasted $832,000. However, I would be so much happier, and the country would be so much better off, if these same politicians used their energies to go after the really big destroyers of taxpayer wealth that exist within the Federal bureaucracy today.

And besides the handful examples listed above, I have a great suggestion on another simple way to save over $100 million of taxpayer waste. According to the June 11, 2012 issue of Business Week magazine, American taxpayers are again going to finance the political conventions of the Republicans and Democrats later this summer.

According to Business Week, this year we will have to pay about $136 million so that people we mostly despise, according to most pubic opinion polls, can go to an unnecessary convention to just party for three or four days. These conventions are unnecessary relics from our political past.

These conventions no longer decide who will be each party's Presidential candidate, the primaries have already decided that.

These conventions no longer are needed to develop their party's platforms. These platforms were and are never read by anybody anyway.

The only people that want to have these conventions are the political elitists in this country that want to act important in front of the cameras for a few days, pumping up their own egos, and partying their butts off, all on taxpayer expense. This travesty and need for change was documented as Step 13 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:" Stop funding political conventions with taxpayer money. All costs, including security costs, should be the responsibility of each political party."

If Congress really wants to do something worthwhile, they should terminate the wasteful tradition of using taxpayer money to fund their political conventions. Other political parties (Libertarian, Socialist, Green, Constitution) do not get free money to run their conventions, the Republicans and Democrats should also not get any taxpayer support.

The $136,000,000 that will be expended this year is 163 times more wasteful than what the GSA employees did. Thus, the political class would be 163 times more effective if they attacked the wasting of taxpayer money on their conventions with the same enthusiasm they used in attacking the wasting of taxpayer money on the GSA "convention." Heads, not good times, should roll because of the wasteful convention spending.



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