In light of revelations surrounding lavish spending on a General Services Administration conference, it stands to reason that Congress would hold hearings and ask questions. It's a legitimate controversy that has drawn bipartisan outrage, and several leading GSA officials have already resigned.
But some congressional Republicans appear eager to push this in a misguided direction.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), for example, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, argued yesterday that the White House "knew about" GSA's mistakes, "did nothing, kept it quiet until just a few days ago." Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight committee, also said that the Obama administration tried to hide the matter.
It's an election year, and the fact that there have been no serious White House scandals during President Obama's term is no doubt frustrating for his critics, but the truth of the matter is, the GSA conference came to light because the Obama administration launched an investigation and uncovered wrongdoing.
In fact, this story came to light because of a yearlong investigation by the inspector general, and because GSA chief Martha Johnson resigned just hours before its release. [...]
An Obama administration ally emails over a different take: "House Republicans started this Congress by claiming the Obama Administration was one of the most corrupt in history, yet they to date they have produced no evidence of wrongdoing" he wrote.
What's more, Politico found that spending on the biannual General Services Administration Western Region Conference "soared nearly 250 percent during the Bush years." [Update: The Politico report has been corrected to say costs went up 102 percent in Bush's second term, not 250 percent. That's still a significant increase, of course.]
This doesn't have to be a partisan food fight. The GSA clearly misused tax dollars, and Congress is justified to launch an investigation. But the problem started before Obama took office, and no one can credibly claim that the Obama administration covered up a problem that the Obama administration was responsible for uncovering in the first place.
Congressional Republicans, you have a legitimate example of a government bureaucracy spending too much money without cause. You're free to jump up and down about this, and use it as an example of wasteful spending, but alleging a conspiracy without evidence is silly.
Leave a Comment:
" But the problem started before Obama took office,"
Waaaay before: it started when his mother slept with That African.
To paraphrase Trent Lott, "Is she hadn't done the dirty, we wouldn't be having all these problems today."
DAY You are a complete idiot. Your post is racist and not worthy of a post on this blog! But of course you would be upset if I told you that you would not be a problem either if your mom hadn't "done the dirty with your dad" we wouldn't have to listen to you!!!
It appeared to me that DAY was sarcastically parroting the Birther / TEA Party crowd. Perhaps you've forgotten that Lott said the country would have "avoided all these problems" if it had, decades ago, elected a racist southern whack job as POTUS. This article includes a reference to the Lott incident, in the context of the Harry Reid incident.
There exists a very real problem with detecting sarcasm in online discussion forums like this one. The right wing nut jobs, for example, perform such an amazing feat of living their own self-parody, that it can be quite difficult to tell when someone is mocking them. There are a number of serious suggestions that civilization needs punctuation for irony and sarcasm and even one quasi commercial effort to promote a sarcasm mark, known as SarcMark.
Steve you are wrong. It does have to be a partisan food fight. That is what Cable News and the Super Pacs demand.
Of course GSA has been abusive with our tax dollars regardless of which party inhabits the white house. The GSA is the definition of Big Government. That's why half of the nation feels that increasing the size and scope of the federal government is a bad idea. Dems believe that the government knows better on how to spend your money and taxes should be raised on the middle-class and rich and redistributed to the poor. Republicans believe that the individual knows better and wants to shrink the scope and role of government.
With this GSA scandal we can see the evidence of big government wasteful spending. Steve, I am surprised that your take on this is that the bushies were just as bad. Where is your outrage? This isn't a partisan issue.
No they don't. Democrats believe that if you raise taxes it will close the deficit gap and help to pay off the national debt over time. You cannot complain about the debt and deficit, which you have done so before Hank, and then complain about taxes being raised. It is, unfortunately, a math issue and that makes it an either/or. Either you raise taxes and cut spending or you have an exploded deficit and debt.
Not really. Romney's tax plan raises taxes on the poor and middle class while dramatically cutting taxes on the wealthy. His plan also expands several federal bureaucracies, the largest of which belong to the DoD and the DHS. Romney's plan will also explode the deficit by an additional $3 trillion.
It is, unfortunately, a math issue - Agreed. And what the math shows is that the rate of growth of non-descretionary expenditure can not be sustained. We have to cut all spending in conjunction with raising revenue through the revamping of the tax code. Obama's Simpson-Bowles commission provided a plan to do this which Obama completely ignored. Simpson-Bowles can only happen if he leads on this.
Change the word "silly" at the end, to "politically useful."
". You're free to jump up and down about this, and use it as an example of wasteful spending, but alleging a conspiracy without evidence is silly."
They can't change who they are namely a "silly bunch" of whiners.....
I predict Mitt Romney will weave a convenient lie about this and when everyone says (not to him, mind you) he's lying....he'll continue anyway.
"This President condones wasting your tax dollars!" or something like that...
I laugh at the outrage over approx $900,000 when we've dumped billions to Haliburton and other contractors. It is a puny sum in comparison. No, they should not have done it regardless, but that would be like me snarfing a pen from work while someone else is stealing a car.
The goal is impeachment. Republicans are looking for any wrongdoing that they can find so that they can tie it to the PBO Administration and state that this misconducted justifies impeachment. Sighs
I will agree on one thing: what the GSA did was an outrage. I am glad that these individuals are going to be held accountable. The same goes w/ the ongoing Secret Service scandal as well.
Its funny how MSNBC turned this into a story about a GOP witch-hunt. All I know is that there has been a terrible abuse of taxpayer money within government under the leadership of the greatest spender of all time.
Please note the 5th amendment protection being taken by hacks during the most transparent administration of all time! Lol!
Yeah, but Bush isn't the president any more...