ICYMI: Denham on Fox News' America's Newsroom

Statement

Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Denham (R-Turlock) joined FOX News Channel's Bill Hemmer on America's Newsroom this morning to discuss the General Services Administration (GSA) announcement Thursday that Jeffrey Neely, the GSA regional commissioner behind the outrageous $800,000 Las Vegas conference in 2010, has left the agency.

Denham on Efforts to End Government Waste at GSA:

"The first thing you've got to do is create transparency. This is an agency that has a $10 billion slush fund that is outside of Congressional appropriations. We want the American public to be able to see how their money is being spent, and we want to know when these lavish vacations go on so we're able to identify them and hold those accountable."

"GSA has to justify their existence. I would like to abolish GSA all together. Private industry can do their jobs, and do it cheaper and better. [GSA] sets the standard for every other agency in government. We need to not only figure out how deep this goes but we need to put a stop to do it all together, and stop all conferences."

"We've just recently found out that the Ninth Circuit Court, a federal Court, is holding an annual trip in Maui. They did one in 2010 where they spent $1.1 million on snorkeling trips, yoga, a whole long list of activities that they were extravagantly spending money on. Now they're planning on doing it again August 13th of this year. Not only shows there is a culture of this type of wasteful abuse but an arrogance that they continue to do it after [the GSA scandal]."

Denham on "End of Employment' at GSA for Neely:

"The question really is, why is the Administration keeping all of these individuals on in the first place? They're still collecting not only their paychecks but they're building their pensions. We feel if you break the law, if you have this kind of abuse of taxpayer dollars, then you ought to be fired and fired immediately. We need to set some examples."

"This [wasteful spending] went all the way up to the top. The Administration, the President's hand-picked people knew about this, and they have let it go on for several years. So we're not only demanding the audits but we're going to continue to dig to find out how many more of these [conferences] happened in GSA; how many have happened outside of GSA; and how many millions are being spent across the nation by different agencies?"

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