Budgets. When you don't have oversight, and it is apparent no one cares, why wouldn't you spend like a drunken sailor?
One federal employee leased a $53,000 take-home car with taxpayer money in apparent defiance of federal regulations and regularly billed the government for service at shops such as BMW of Fairfax.
Others charged the government monthly for family members’ cell phones and high-end TV packages and Internet at home — and even at second homes.
Managers freely made out checks to employees without requiring documentation of how it would be spent, giving $1,316 directly to one who said she was reimbursing herself for furniture she bought for a “home office” and using convenience checks to give workers bonuses.
Government employees used federal purchase cards to order items such as a $560 Bose stereo and $1,490 for two high-definition televisions that could not be located.
All of these examples happened at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an obscure runaway government agency where the median annual salary is $120,000.
That amount far exceeds the national median household income but it wasn't enough for many FMCS employees, many of whom routinely charged nearly every conceivable expense to government credit cards known as “purchase cards,” according to bank records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Even the bank didn’t know where much of the money went, because it was paid using checks with an “illegible payee.”
Disgusting waste of taxpayer money, and this is just one agency. What is the true cost throughout the entire Government?
You remember what Nancy Pelosi said a few weeks ago, right?