WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of a House panel is asking Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to turn over toCongress documents and information the lawmaker alleges will show “a pattern of wasteful spending and mismanagement” at the Labor Department.
Rep. Darrell E. Issa, R-Calif., who leads the House Oversight Committee, asserted that the Labor Department’s Office of Public Affairs “frivolously spends taxpayer money on unnecessary items.” As an example, the lawmaker cited elevator posters changed weekly in the 23 passenger elevators at the department’s headquarters, at a cost of $2,637 a week.
Since 2009, the posters have cost a total of more than $600,000, Issa wrote to Perez in a letter dated Monday. He also criticized what he depicted as excessive travel by Labor Department officials, and charged that the department used taxpayer dollars to hire a Washington Nationals baseball team mascot for an agency event “and spent over $100,000 to promote a book club.”
The department issued a statement defending the spending as a valid morale booster for employees. “Our internal communications efforts make a difference in employee satisfaction, retention and most importantly, performance. Better performance from our employees translates into better value for the public,” the department said.
Issa suggested such spending flies in the face of a November 2011 executive order by President Barack Obama directing executive-branch agencies to cut spending on “extraneous promotional items” and to “devise strategic alternatives to government travel.”
“Spending taxpayer dollars on elevator posters, award contests, and unnecessary travel seems to be precisely the type of conduct President Obama intended to curtail,” said Issa, a frequent critic of the Democratic administration.
___
Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Who could possibly know more about wasting taxpayer money than Darrell Issa?
Issa suggested such spending flies in the face of a November 2011
executive order by President Barack Obama directing executive-branch
agencies to cut spending on “extraneous promotional items” and to
"devise strategic alternatives to government travel."
Why don’t we calculate all the biweekly, first-class air travel of 535 lawmakers, year in and year out?
The House oversight chairman makes Kenny Starr seem thrifty.
…and how much is Issa’s jihad costing taxpayers?
Friggin Issa dares to speak of wasting taxpayer money.
The King of wasting taxpayer money has spoken. Now all bend over as he sticks it once again to the taxpayer just by waking up in the morning thinking this will be his day.
When the word “moron” was devised, they forgot to consider if this kind of being would ever infect the human race. Which brings up a new word to replace moron. I just can’t think of it yet because that word has yet to be spoken. It will come to me someday.