If the 2008 financial crisis caused the nation to tighten its belt, the Justice Department didn’t get the memo.
The federal agency spent about $490,000 on food and beverages at 10 conferences, including $16 apiece for muffins, more than a dollar an ounce for coffee and $32 per person on snacks, according to a new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general.
The half-a-million-dollar tab represented more than 10 percent of the $4.4 million total cost of the events that were held between October 2007 and September 2009.
“Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending – especially when service charges, taxes, and indirect costs are factored into the actual price paid for food and beverages,” the report reads, citing a $76-per-person lunch at one workshop.
The inspector general made 10 recommendations to improve oversight and minimize conference costs, all of which were accepted by the Justice Department.
You have to improve oversight and develop procedures to stop people from spending $16 on a muffin?
This is why I roll my eyes when I hear stories like this. The people spending this money know, inherently, that those numbers are ridiculous, yet they don’t care because it’s not their money, it’s YOUR MONEY. There is no more inefficient system than one that takes money from one person to spend on another. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself the obvious question: if you were going to buy muffins, would you spend $16 a piece on them? Of course not.
But in the government’s mind, the spending isn’t the problem. The lack of care for your money isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that there wasn’t enough government oversight. In other words, the problem isn’t the action wasting your money, it’s that there wasn’t enough government overseeing that wasting of money.
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.