Re: How the Bushies LOVE to waste YOUR money !!!!

In article <2b9tj1d2dub4d1504003bnfmu5cpbi09v6@xxxxxxx>, Dave Hazelwood <the_big_kahuna@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Report: NASA wasted millions on routine travel
>
>Friday, September 30, 2005 Posted: 1328 GMT (2128 HKT)
>
>CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA wasted millions of dollars over a
>two-year period by shunning commercial airline flights and instead
>using its own planes for routine travel, according to a government
>report provided to The Associated Press on Thursday.
>
>The Government Accountability Office found that NASA spent at least
>five times more by flying employees on its own planes in fiscal 2003
>and 2004, compared with the cost of commercial coach tickets. The
>extra spending totaled about $20 million.
>
>The GAO also reported that 86 percent of NASA's own passenger flights
>in those two years -- or about seven of every eight flights --
>involved routine business trips prohibited by rules governing what
>sorts of flights federal workers can take on government aircraft.
>
>Some travel examples cited in the report include meetings, speeches,
>executive retreats and even the inauguration of Florida's governor and
>the 60th anniversary ceremony of the Pearl Harbor attack.
>
>It was the government's latest criticism of NASA's use of passenger
>planes. Twice during the 1990s, the space agency's own inspector
>general office found faults with the travel system.
>
>Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who requested the GAO investigation, said
>she is troubled that "this abuse of the aircraft has been going on for
>years." Her office provided a copy of the GAO report to the AP on
>Thursday, a day before its public release.
>
>"It's frustrating that it's taken two (inspector general) audits, a
>GAO investigation and the threat of a congressional oversight hearing
>to get an agency to comply with its obligations to the taxpayers,"
>Collins said in a phone interview.
>
>"In the environment we're in right now with tight federal budgets and
>the demands of responding to Hurricane Katrina, it is particularly
>disturbing to learn that a federal agency is not being a more careful
>steward of the taxpayers' dollars. There's also a waste of fuel here,
>too."
>
>Collins, who heads the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
>Governmental Affairs, said she has talked to NASA Administrator
>Michael Griffin, who took over the space agency just this year, and he
>has promised to make changes.
>
>"Our goal is to fully comply with federal-wide aircraft management
>policy," Griffin assured the GAO in a letter included in the report.
>
>Griffin's predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, now Louisiana State University's
>chancellor, was in charge of NASA during the period covered by the GAO
>investigation. O'Keefe is not mentioned by name in the report; former
>and current senior NASA officials told the AP earlier this year he was
>being investigated personally for potential misuse of government
>planes and taking too many expensive getaways with his staff.
>
>The GAO noted that while most NASA air travel is on commercial
>airlines, employees took at least 1,188 flights using space agency
>planes during the two-year period under review. Collins said she asked
>the GAO to subtract flights related to the 2003 Columbia tragedy.
>
>Even so, "we're talking about almost 1,200 flights during fiscal years
>2003 and 2004 that are questionable flights," she said.
>
>In 2003, NASA owned and operated 85 planes valued at $362 million --
>53 planes to support the space shuttle, space station and astronaut
>programs, 25 for research and development, and seven for passenger
>travel. The space agency has owned a small fleet of passenger planes
>since its inception in 1958.
>

Why does it concern you? Are you a US citizen?
.

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