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Jewish World Review
Feb. 9, 2006
/ 10 Shevat, 5766
The government junkets you fund
By
Michelle Malkin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
$1,401,104,263.
That's how much of our hard-earned money has gone to subsidize the spring break-style trips and conferences of the federal government over
the last five years. Spending on bureaucracy boondoggles has increased some 70 percent in that time period.
We wouldn't know anything about this binge if Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) hadn't asked. Last summer, the pork-busting chairman of the
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and
International Security surveyed all federal departments and agencies and directed them to document their conference, meetings, and travel
expenses since 2000. At a hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Coburn unveiled his findings.
You'll be happy to know that the government junkets your tax dollars have funded include:
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A Department of Housing and Urban Development trip to the resort town of Los Cabos, Mexico for a conference on American real estate and
urban areas.
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Another HUD outing to Honolulu, Hawaii for the Sacramento, California, Home Ownership Fair.
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A Department of State expedition to Vienna, Austria, to partake in "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Train the Trainer" workshops.
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A Department of Health and Human Services jaunt by 236 employees to an AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain. Pricetag: $3.6 million.
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A total of 59 HHS conferences around the world with delegations of more than 100--including over 1,000 attendees to sunny Orlando.
Employed by HHS? You're going to Disneyworld!
It would be one thing if all this worldwide travel were actually related to the actual agency/department goals and duties of the federal
employees packing their bags and riding off into the sunset. But in too many cases, there is little if any connection between the meetings and
the mission.
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Why are we paying for HUD employees to attend the New York State Governor's Dr. Martin Luther King Symposium? Or to a conference held
by the radical, left-wing, open-borders advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza?
Did the Department of Justice really need to dispatch workers to the "Women are Sacred" conference in sunny Phoenix?
Was it necessary to send a whopping 200 HHS employees to a Netherlands "International Symposium on Night and Shiftwork?" Wouldn't it
have saved us all time and money if the HHS researchers traveled to a nearby 7-11 or nursing home instead?
The spendthrift HHS has been among the worst transgressors burning through more than $300 million on conferences between 2000-2005.
Several of the department's publicly-subsidized trips to AIDS conferences have featured free condom distribution to participants, sex- and
drug-themed sessions, and in one case, giveaways of a map to area brothels.
Jet-setting bureaucrats do more than waste money on these working vacations. They are also undermining our nation's best interests. The
State Department has sent its employees to confabs convened by the soft-on-terrorism outfit, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (whose
executive director blamed Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks), as well as to a counterterrorism conference in Saudi
Arabia that deliberately excluded Israel and instead welcomed the Islamist Muslim World League considered by U.S. counterterrorism
officials to be a financial supporter of al Qaeda.
Blowhards in both parties in Washington have pledged to reduce spending and reform business as usual. Yet, Sen. Coburn's attempt to limit
conference spending by just one agency HUD was anonymously stripped from an appropriations bill behind closed doors and
unceremoniously killed.
Who did it? Let's have some transparency. Step forward and tell us why.
You want reform? You want smaller government? There's $1,401,104,263 and counting just waiting to be targeted.
Go ahead and make our day: Cut it out!
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Michelle Malkin's column by clicking here.
Michelle Malkin Archives
MICHELLE'S LATEST:
In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild
Un·hinged
adj : affected with madness or insanity; [syn: brainsick, crazy, demented, distracted, disturbed, mad, sick, unbalanced]
The American Heritage Dictionary
*** Warning: Unhinged liberals are hazardous to the nation's health.
They're slashing your tires. Burning your lawns. Heaving pies at Republican pundits. Hurling racist epithets at minority conservatives. Nursing nutty conspiracy theories. And pining publicly for the murder of President Bush.
And they call us crazy?
In In Unhinged: Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin plays conservative Margaret Mead to the alien political creatures of the American Left. With uproarious detail and rollicking reportage, Malkin chronicles the bizarre world of leftists gone mad in their natural habitats: the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, and Washington.
Unhinged unmasks liberals who've completely abandoned rationality and reality. They're taking chainsaws and bayonets to campaign signs. Running down political opponents with their cars. Setting fire to political opponents in effigy. Defacing war memorials. Swiping yellow ribbons off cars. And supporting the fragging of American troops.
In Unhinged, you'll meet:
- The Top 10 Unhinged Leftists, Celebrities, Media Liberals, and Politicians. - The Pennsylvania Democrat who repeatedly screamed "faggot" at his Republican opponents on the Senate floor. - The Florida Democrat who tried to run down former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. - The Democrat congressman who claimed the capture of Saddam Hussein was staged by GOP operatives to help the Bush re-election campaign. - The veteran newsman who claimed that Bush advisor Karl Rove and Osama bin Laden are working hand-in-hand to help the Republican Party. - And hundreds more unhinged liberals gone wild!
With wit, wisdom, and a bullet-proof vest, Michelle Malkin ruthlessly and raucously skewers the myths of liberal tolerance, peace, and civility. Unhinged shows how conservatives are driving their opponents mad. The good news for liberals? Self-help starts here.
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