IRS spent $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012.

[cali]

A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, a House committee said Sunday.

<snip>


The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about “leadership through art,” the House committee said.

The report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups.


<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/house-panel-treasury-investigators-find-irs-spent-50m-for-220-conferences-from-2010-to-2012/2013/06/02/2ab6e3ee-cbe7-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html

[Gravitycollapse]

1. This is why we can't have nice things.

[Nye Bevan]

2. So why exactly should we be paying for IRS employees to go to baseball games?

No more conferences. No more hotels. No more baseball games.

[cali]

3. anyone who has ever worked for state or federal gov't

or a gov't mandated program contracted out to a non-profit, knows that there are ridiculous numbers of stupid conferences most held at expensive venues.

It's fucked up.

[former9thward]

4. This is 2013.

We can do teleconferencing. Save on the hotels, transportation and other stuff. Anyone who says there is no waste in government has never worked for the government. I worked for 14 years for state government. I did not learn a thing at any conference I went to and no one else did that I knew.

[Skittles]

5. so essentially they are paid vacations?

that's fucked up

[Blue_Tires]

15. +1

I can also attest that it can be very hard to get away from the habit of spending 'other people's money' once you get addicted to it...

[B Calm]

6. and Senator McCain flies half way

around the world on the tax payer dime for a photo op. . .

[madville]

7. It's pretty much a vacation and party

Collect per diem and live lavishly for a week, sounds fun.

[cali]

8. and this is just the IRS

the fed gov't spends billions and billions on this shit every year. really.

[geek tragedy]

9. "billions and billions on this shit every year"

Do you have a source for this claim, outside of the Tea Party Express and/or your own ass?

[cali]

12. I was including travel expenses but you're right sweetums,

the conferences themselves last year only amounted to a mere 268 million last year and non DoD travel spending was a mere 5 billion.

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130227/TRAVEL02/302270003/Report-Agencies-spent-268-million-conferences-last-year

and then there's shit like this:

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/park-service-spending-millions-conferences-while-r/nXzS4/

I'm glad that the administration has ordered agencies to cut back.

[geek tragedy]

13. Okay, your source was Darrel Issa then.

Agencies hosted or attended 767 large conferences at a cost of $268 million last year, according to new federal data released Wednesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

...

The committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a Feb. 27 release that total federal travel last year cost $14.8 billion, citing Office of Management and Budget figures.

Travel for non-Defense agencies nearly doubled — from $3 billion to $5.8 billion — in the period from 2001 to 2012, while Defense Department travel increased during that period by roughly 50 percent, from $6 billion to $9 billion, the committee said.

The committee plans to hold a hearing Wednesday on waste and mismanagement in federal travel spending.

Glad to see you and Mr. Grand Theft Auto are on the same wavelength. The fact that federal employees travel for their jobs is indeed a scandal, as are conferences to familiarize the stakeholders re: ACA implementation. You and Rep. Issa are correct that such spending is wasteful and evidence of big government run amok.

[cali]

16. no genius, it's not.

federal data, dear.

[geek tragedy]

17. You cited Darrell Issa's stats for your contention that "billions and billions"

are wasted every year on federal travel.

So, you are essentially making Issa's argument that it's a waste of taxpayer money for federal employees to travel as part of their job.

[malaise]

10. and a Bush appointee was in charge n/t

[ProSense]

11. Why

"IRS spent $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012."

...exactly do Republicans suddenly give a shit? They should have reported this last year when the Bush appointed IRS commissioner was still on the job.

Republicans have no problem wasting taxpayer dollars. They spent $55 million on votes to repeal Obamacare.

Four Better Ways To Spend The $55 Million Wasted On Votes To Repeal The Affordable Care Act
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/05/15/2016821/affordable-care-act-repeal-taxpayer-money/

[geek tragedy]

14. Hey, the OP and Darrell Issa see this as a scandal.

Who are we to disagree?

[Capt. Obvious]

18. This is scandalous

More so than the fact that someone ate my lunch today.

What the fuck am I going to eat for lunch now? It's raining out and I don't want to go out in the rain to get lunch.