Sunday, April 22, 2012

People Unconvinced Obama's Outrage Over GSA Scandal Is Real

By Susan Duclos

Quick background: The General Services Administration Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report (23 page PDF) which found "many of the expenditures on this conference were excessive and wasteful and that in many instances GSA followed neither federal procurement laws nor its own policy on conference spending."

 The findings included; GSA spending on conference planning was excessive, wasteful, and in some cases impermissible, GSA failed to follow contracting regulations in many of the procurements associated with the WRC and wasted taxpayer dollars, GSA incurred excessive and impermissible costs for food at the Western Regions Conference (WRC), GSA incurred impermissible and questionable miscellaneous expenses, GSA’s approach to the conference indicates that minimizing expenses was not a goal.

Congressional oversight hearings have begun.

Today The Politico reports that according to David Axelrod on NBC's "Meet the Press", Barack Obama is "apoplectic" and the issues was "very enraging" to Obama.

Reactions over at The Politico, via the comment section, show readers unconvinced of Obama's outrage and apoplexy.


Gary Sieburg responds to the story with "So if he is apoplectic about this why did he not bother to mention this for 2 years when it has been proven that he knew about it? And why didn't Meet the Press even ask that question? Could it be they were covering it up like they are doing with Fast and Furious Scandal and the Secret Service prostitution Scandal. Does the big media only investigate Republicans? Seems so."

He seems to be referring to the fact that the head of that agency received an alert from the inspector general  last year, but no action was taken until this blew up in the administrations face publicly.

 Robert Barnard adds his two cents with "So Obama's apoplectic about the poor stewardship of taxpayer money at GSA, but gives himself a solid B+ on squandering 500 times more money on doomed-to-fail green ventures. No irony there. Let me sum up Obama's presidency in one phrase : With great power, comes NO responsibility. (Unless you're George Bush)." 

 Just a couple examples from those comments, readers can click and see the rest, but over at Twitter, #GSA has a hashtag and the comments as well as links to photos and media reports have been brutal.



Obama probably is apoplectic over this. Not because of the spending abuse but because it exploded in Obama's face during his reelection campaign when he is already suffering in his 13th quarter polling, with historical presidential 13th quarter polling showing him behind .... Jimmy Carter.