Throwback Thursday: Bureaucrats Spent Lavishly on Private Dinners
In 1982, the Office of Management and Budget spent $2.3 million – $10 million in 2023 dollars – to let a host of federal bureaucrats dine in 22 private dining rooms while taxpayers footed the bill.
Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, awarded OMB his Golden Fleece Award for these lavish expenditures.
Proxmire found that these highly-compensated officials were reimbursed on meals at a rate of 82% when they dined in luxurious private rooms. Some of the top offenders were officials at the Department of Defense, where the Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all had private dining rooms, which combined racked up $1.8 million in taxpayer subsidies for meals.
The president had recently directed officials using private dining rooms to pay the full cost of their meals. The 1983 president’s budget directed each agency to apply “uniform principles of cost recovery,” which focused on ensuring those benefiting from these meals were paying for them. This would have led to certain fees being charged to pay for the meals. Unfortunately, this guidance was ignored.
Proxmire also noted the many agencies like the Department of Energy and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with the U.S. Senate, that get along just fine without private dining rooms subsidized by taxpayers.
Civil servants shouldn’t get to live high on the hog while in government, especially not on the taxpayer dime. As Proxmire quipped, those treated to private dinners should show the frugality they demand of other Americans as they debate cutting spending and programs.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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