For decades, the poor optics of lavish government spending have dominated headlines and embarrassed politicians. Nearly fifty years ago, the late Senator William Proxmire awarded offending spenders the “Golden Fleece” to recognize those who wasted taxpayer funds in especially abusive ways. The tradition of exposing government officials for breaking budgets and shattering public trust continues to be carried on today by groups like Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense. Despite the public exposure and shaming by these (and other) organizations, combined with White House efforts to “drain the swamp,” stories about government waste abound.
Carefully guarding against the squandering of public resources should be important to any politician and government official simply because it is the right thing to do. Further, scrutiny of spending by various watchdog organizations (on the right and left) should be enough incentive for officials to want to avoid the embarrassment. So why is keeping spending in check such a challenge once one arrives in Washington?
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced out in September for chartering private jets. Regardless if these trips were for official business and approved by the legal and ethics staff at the agency, the taxpayer surely never saw the value of these expenses. To his credit, Price did repay his costs for these trips.
Inquiries about other official travel and expenses continue to be made across multiple agencies.
So why do some officials get a pink slip and others get a free pass when excessive spending allegations are raised? Perhaps more importantly, why does it cost so much more for the government to procure basic products and services?
Why would it cost $139,000 to upgrade the double doors in Ryan Zinke’s Interior Department office? How is it possible that the Environmental Protection Agency could spend $43,000 on a “secure phone booth” for Scott Pruitt? How could the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Ben Carson even think about spending $31,000 on new furniture, before Dr. Carson finally stepped in to cancel the order under mounting scrutiny?
Government leaders should have seen the expensive lesson learned by Tom Price and the Golden Fleece winners before him, that if you waste taxpayer dollars, your days on the job are numbered – yet these eye-popping expenses continue – in large part because of the way the federal procurement process is – there is no alternative.
Something rarely mentioned by legislators on the attack over high price tags is the fact that nowhere is the federal bureaucracy as burdensome as it is in the procurement process. The bureaucracy created to manage the procurement process inflates prices, diminishing the value of taxpayer dollars.
Ironically, many of the same politicians who complain about excessive expenditures are the ones who support the process of government procurement at the General Services Administration (GSA).
Perhaps it is not always lavish, unnecessary spending that leads to these expenses. Replacing furniture that was used during the Nixon Administration is reasonable – and while the high prices often are not, the prices are driven up because the government bureaucracy dramatically inflated the costs of what could be an ordinary, legitimate expense.
It takes leadership to guard against the fleecing of the taxpayer. The GSA must be on the front lines in the battle to protect taxpayer dollars and keep prices low.
Rather than trying to play “gotcha” with the purchase of a “lavish,” high priced item, perhaps it’s time to address the root of the problem: the federal procurement process. Demonizing good public servants because of a broken procurement process is not fair.
Addressing the real cause of excessive spending, the broken procurement process, and empowering GSA to fix it, would make it easier for public servants to be more productive, save money, and benefit us all.
Dan Rene is a senior vice president in the public affairs practice at LEVICK, a strategic communications firm.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.