GSA executive traveled to Hawaii, South Pacific after warnings – latimes.com.

Amid all of our partisan debates about big government vs. small government, we are missing out on the most important opportunity we have to get more out of our taxpayer dollars: eliminating FAT government.

Fat Government is our term for taxpayer money that is used to pay for activities that neither contribute to nor support the broader goals of government and the nation, that is wasted due to inefficiencies,  that is lost to corruption, or that is siphoned by government employees who are “working” the system.

Paying for a GSA employee, regardless of his level, to take non-essential travel is wasteful. Paying for him to travel on what were essentially junkets is worse. Where he went is irrelevant: if he spent the government coin to go goof off in Bethesda would have been morally every bit as reprehensible as flying off to Napa Valley, Hawaii, and the South Pacific.

There is now a bipartisan tide of fury growing around the “culture of excess,” wastefulness, and entitlement at the GSA. The system is not working and it needs to be fixed.

It would be delusion to believe that the waste ends there. We need not only to hunt down such institutional cultures and practices wherever they may exist in government, we must replace them with positive cultures of frugality and service.

The same applies not just in the federal government, but at every level of government in the US. Where is the fat?

American government needs a liposuction. Where else can we look?

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• Congress Gets Earful About How Much GSA Is Spending (denver.cbslocal.com)
• Second Day Of Hearings Set Over $823,000 GSA Vegas Tab (washington.cbslocal.com)
• GSA Corruption More Far Reaching Than Suspected, Says Lawmaker, Watchdog Group – OpEd (eurasiareview.com)
• On Tax Day, Remember The GSA! (webnerhouse.com)