Mike Causey

This Round Is On You

Did you hear about the $17,500 Postal Service dinner, or the Forest Service employee who gave her boyfriend $600,000 to help with his gambling problem. Whether ...

Federal News Network Staff

April 10, 2008 4:00 am

3 min read

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single credit card.” Adaptation of ancient Chinese proverb.

Nervous politicians have decided to jump-start the economy (preventing, slowing or ending a recession) by sending all of us so-called “stimulus checks.” Free money they hope and pray we will spend, not save. Yours (and mine) should be in the mail next month. Even if we don’t pay taxes, we may still get a rebate!

Some devil-may-care federal and postal workers are also trying to jump-start the economy. They are doing it by using government credit cards to charge Uncle Sam for everything from expensive lingerie to computers, to a $17,500 dinner U.S. Postal Service brass hosted in Orlando. To entertain clients. And USPS brass too.

So, how much do you tip on a $17,500 check? Actually, it doesn’t matter because you paid.

A U.S.Forest Service employee in Oregon wrote so-called convenience checks of more than $640,000 over a 6-year period. The money went to her boyfriend who, and this is the understatement of the month, had a gambling problem! The government didn’t have a clue, apparently, until a coworker tipped the IG at the Agriculture Department. So much for cost controls.

There are a couple of problems with the situation.

First, this not the first time some incredibly stupid feds have been caught living large at taxpayer expense. There have been past cases, which make page one and lead the nightly news, of people giving fabulous parties, purchasing prostitutes, and taking vacations via government-backed credit cards. Yet we rarely hear of any follow-up (do they get fired, go to jail, repay the government?). And it keeps happening over and over again.

Some years ago a Washington-based fed bought a car with her government credit card. Hello!?!

Second, the stupid, crooked, what-was-I-thinking? behavior involves only a tiny fraction of the federal-military workforce. Yet anytime it happens, and it apparently happens all the time, everybody in government gets soiled. It’ll be on late night TV and the subject of thumb-sucker articles (like this), tainting everybody who works for the government.

All of your hurricane relief efforts, which in many cases were downright heroic, will disappear because one idiot-crook bought a computer (or ten) for himself and friends. Or took the extended family on a cruise. Or for a champagne and cognac booze-up to “drum up business” or get to know customers.

Many feds don’t want the cards and don’t want to have to use them.

In the media biz, we all cringe when one of our own gets caught copying somebody else’s work, making up stories, fabricating quotes or using bogus documents to back up a legless story. And most of us probably suffer because of the stupid sins of a handful of our colleagues. Then along comes a story like this, with the fact-checking done by the Government Accountability Office, to get us off the hook.

Meantime, the administration says it supports pending Senate legislation, the Government Credit Card Abuse Prevention Act, that would provide for, are you ready?, regular audits and checks to see if the purchase cards are being abused.

Regular audits! What a great idea. Why didn’t somebody think of it, like, before?

Nearly Useless Factoid

The first crash test dummy was the Sierra Sam created in 1949. He/it was developed under a contract with the United States Air Force, to be used for evaluation of aircraft ejection seats on rocket sled tests.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com