The Obama Administration took swift action against the General Services Administration for its excessive frill-filled conference reaffirming that there is no place for clowns and mind readers in official government business.
But an anonymous source provided numbers to the news outlet Politico last week, floating the idea that the opulence of the GSA Western Region Conference had its roots in the Bush administration.
The source turned over documents to Politico showing that from 2004 to 2006 the cost of the conference ballooned by nearly 250 percent from $93,000 to $323,855.
But the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform says that whomever provided those numbers from the Obama administration fibbed.
"Instead of costs going up 248 percent between 2004 and 2006 as had been claimed, costs were actually reduced from $401,024 in 2004 to $323,855 in 2006—a 19 percent decrease," the press release from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform stated.
The committee will hold a hearing on the $840,616 Las Vegas GSA conference that has Americans shaking their heads. The committee says that between the $75,000 bike-building activity to decadent costume rentals, the 2010 conference was an unprecedented waste that cost taxpayers 312 percent more than any other convention of its kind.
The hearing titled "Addressing GSA's Culture of Wasteful Spending" is scheduled for Monday and former GSA Administrator Martha Johnson, who resigned in the wake of the controversy, is expected to testify.
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