Uncovering Government Travel Fraud

Is there a better agency in the US government than the Government Accountability Office?  The GAO has exposed one of the greatest things that irks me, which is the waste of government money by federal employees, mainly the State Department:

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees.

The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified.

Among the worst offenders: the State Department, whose employees typically fly abroad on official business.  [Hope Yen, AP]

A lieutenant colonel I know who is in the Army, but was attached to the State Department once told me how the team of State Department personnel he once worked with would fly business class wherever they went while he sat in the back in economy class because he worked for the Army.  The State Department employees which many of them are young just out of graduate college types used to laugh at the fact that the older lieutenant colonel had to sit in the back of the plane while the younger State Department employees sat in the front.

It isn’t just planes either there is a lot of waste in the State Department and with the GAO would audit the whole place.  Just look at how Paul Bremer ran Iraq, that will give you an idea how the State Department is run.   I had some dealings with State Department personnel before and needless to say I was not impressed and many of us called them "Trustifarians" because so many of them were young kids just out of grad school that thought they knew it all.   

Just for the record I have flown once in the front of the plane.  The rest of the time I have flown economy.  The only time I have flown in front of the plane was when I went to war.  The planes the military used to deploy soldiers to Kuwait were charter planes.  I was on a chartered United Airlines flight to Kuwait and was given a business class seat and let me tell you it is nice to fly in the front of the plane and the State Department employees obviously know this better than anyone.