The Obama administration’s Department of Labor is under investigation for abusing its office credit card for a lavish taxpayer-funded spending spree, The Daily Caller has exclusively learned.
Adri Jayaratne, the man who approved the spending spree, was recently nominated to be an assistant secretary of labor by President Obama, but DOL officials didn’t tell the senators anything about the existence of an inspector general investigation.
DOL’s wild spending alienated some of the employees, who actually defaced expensive DOL-purchased posters, including one of a gay rights icon.
DOL’s congressional affairs office made numerous purchases on flat-screen TVs, computers and furniture in the days before the end of the fiscal year and charged it all on an office credit card in violation of government procurement rules, according to a knowledgeable insider.
As with other federal government agencies, if DOL doesn’t spend its full budget before Sept. 30, it hurts next year’s budget requests.
Luiz Santos, spokesman for the DOL office of the inspector general, told TheDC that his office “does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.”
DOL’s expensive printing of labor-themed posters for department office walls bothered some employees at the department’s Washington, D.C. headquarters. The posters, including one that depicted the late gay labor leader Bayard Rustin as an “LGBT” crusader instead of focusing on his labor work, were routinely defaced or marked with stickers for Local 12, the DOL’s employees union.
This story has been corrected to show that Jayaratne has been nominated, but not approved by the Senate.
