There was more bipartisan outrage in a second day of hearings about excessive spending by top officials of the General Services Administration, as lawmakers were told regional GSA officials spent money with little to no oversight from headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"I'm coming to a boiling point," said a stern Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA), who verbally dressed down a series of GSA officials and raised questions about whether the entire agency should be thrown off the legislative cliff.
"There should be a farewell party," said Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA).
Not at the second hearing was the man in charge of the now infamous GSA conference in Las Vegas, as Jeff Neely was a no-show, further aggravating lawmakers a day after Neely had taken the Fifth Amenmdent before another panel.
"The only pictures I can get of him (Neely) is in his hot tub," said Rep. John Mica (R-FL), referring to embarrassing photos of Neely that surfaced on the internet, showing Neely fully enjoying his Vegas suite with full glasses of wine in the picture.
Mica ticked off a series of travel destinations for Neely which critics say were nothing but junkets on the government dime - some of which included his wife and daughter.
Those trips included what lawmakers repeatedly described as a "17-day South Pacific junket" which drew the attention of higher-ups in Washington, D.C., but was ultimately given the go-ahead by now ex-GSA chief Martha Johnson.
That type of oversight from headquarters was rare, and only undertaken because of the probe of the 2010 Las Vegas GSA conference, as witnesses told Congress that the regional offices of the GSA pretty much called their own shots on almost everything.
"GSA financial management operations were decentralized and were managed by autonomous regional CFO's with no oversight or control by my office," said the Chief Financial Officer of the GSA, Alison Doone.
In other words, the women who was the CFO of the entire department was really just the CFO of what went on at GSA headquarters and the immediate Washington, D.C. area, and not the ten other regions of the GSA.
Doone is no rookie when it comes to this kind of job, as she held the same CFO position at the Internal Revenue Service and was CFO for the Federal Election Commission.
"In my experience at IRS and other federal agencies, the agency CFO had far more oversight and control," Doone said.
That has been fixed in the last week, as now Doone holds oversight power over budget and spending by all of the GSA regions.
Two more hearings are on tap in the Senate on Wednesday; they seem likely to produce the same kind of bipartisan brow-furrowing, as lawmakers try to grasp how big of a problem there might be when it comes to waste across the reach of the federal government.
Also at play here is a more subtle battle between the Congress and the GSA on the details of its work, as lawmakers used the hearing to again demand documents about properties held by the GSA and various budget decisions - it is information the GSA continues to withhold in many cases from the same committees holding hearings this week.
"We smelled a rat last year, which is why the Committee requested information from the GSA about the tripling of the Public Buildings Service Commissioner’s office administrative costs,” said Rep. Mica (R-FL).
“The agency continues to stonewall the Committee’s request.”
Before this spending scandal broke, the GSA would have been favored to win that bureaucratic battle with Congress - but now, the tide may have changed in the favor of the Congress.
One might expect a flurry of amendments on the GSA's funding bill later this year.
