Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: Quasi-Federal Agency Spends On Study To Give Itself A Raise
In 1982, the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a quasi-government entity, spent more than $44,000 — over $140,000 in 2023 dollars — to study its salary structure and recommend raising pay as high as $190,000.
For this wasteful spending, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the corporation a Golden Fleece Award. He gave awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, eventually handing out 168 Golden Fleece Awards between 1975 and 1988.
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a U.S. government-funded corporation established in 1980 by the Energy Security Act and disbanded six years later.
It was created to finance the development of commercial synthetic fuel manufacturing plants, such as coal gasification, to produce alternatives to imported fossil fuels.
The seven-member board of directors received billions in initial funding for joint ventures with primarily oil and gas companies to build plants and help finance coal mines or transportation facilities.
Congress authorized over 12 years funding of $88 billion, plus another $35 million in annual administrative expenses, with up to 300 full-time employees.
The $44,000 study, delivered in December 1981 recommended pay increases up to 173 percent — from a pay of $69,630 to $190,358 for the chairman, and other raises up to 137 percent for other senior positions.
“The president must approve any salaries over $69,630, the pay of a cabinet officer,” Proxmire said at the time. “The corporation’s board of directors has already decided to recommend that two positions be paid more than this.”
The senator recommended that the corporation be abolished, and four years later it was. But not before it spent $10 million to lease 67,321 square feet of office space on Washington D.C.’s K Street/
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