The chief of the General Services Administration resigned, two of her top deputies were fired and four managers were placed on leave Monday amid reports of lavish spending at a conference off the Las Vegas Strip that featured a clown, a mind reader and a $31,208 reception.
Administrator Martha N. Johnson, in her resignation letter, acknowledged a “significant misstep” at the agency that manages real estate for the federal government. “Taxpayer dollars were squandered,” she wrote. At the start of her tenure in February 2010 she called ethics “a big issue for me.”
he leadership collapse came hours before GSA Inspector General Brian D. Miller released a scathing report on the $823,000 training conference, held for 300 West Coast employees at the M Resort and Casino, an opulent hotel in Henderson, Nev., just south of Las Vegas. From $130,000 in travel expenses for six scouting trips to a $2,000 party in Peck’s loft suite, event planners violated federal limits on conference spending.
The episode is an embarrassment for the Obama administration at a time when the role and size of government have taken center stage in the presidential campaign. How much government should spend, and on what, will be at the heart of the election-year battles between Democrats and Republicans.
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In April 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Johnson to serve as the Administrator of the GSA. On June 8, 2009, Johnson's nomination was reported out of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Johnson's nomination languished for months after Missouri Sen. Kit Bond placed a hold on her nomination over concerns he had about why the GSA wasn't closing down the federally owned Bannister Complex outside Kansas City, Missouri and relocating staff to leased space in downtown Kansas City.
On January 28, 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed for cloture on Johnson's nomination.
On February 3, 2010, Obama, in an unusual move for a sitting president, sharply criticized Bond and Republican senators for blocking Johnson's nomination, and complained that Republicans were blocking nominees for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications for their prospective jobs.
While at a retreat for Democratic senators, Obama made the comments in response to a question from Sen. Patrick Leahy about his judicial nominations. Obama expanded his answer to include not just blocked judicial nominations but also executive nominations as well:
“Nobody can tell me that there's anything particularly wrong with her. They're blocking her because of some unrelated matter. Don't hold this — this woman hostage. If you have an objection about my health-care policies, then let's debate the health-care policies. But don't suddenly end up having a GSA administrator who is stuck in limbo somewhere because you don't like something else that we're doing.”
—Barack Obama
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
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try not to forget that this crap is actually business as usual, and has little to nothing to do with Obama being president.
just before 9-11 a few people at the Pentagon tried to alert the nation of a few billion missing dollars and got their "walking papers" instead, that was business as usual....
some guys at Dover (the mortuary for the east coast military) reported that soldiers remains were bieng mishandled and got fired too, but the OSC stepped in and re-instated them and is now trying to fire the Director and others who punished the whislteblowers... the Obama admin is protecting whistleblowers BETTER (not necessarily well) than anybody has before...
this case is proof thatObama is willing to take soemoen off th ejob if they screw up...
when the Ag secretary screwed up over the racist complaints? he took strong actions tooo, but he didn't fire teh Secretary, which remains problematic, we'll see before long if that was good thing or a bad thing.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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