Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Bureaucrats' Fancy Party at Posh Resort

Remember the much-deserved outrage when AIG executives partied at five-star resorts after getting bailed out with taxpayer funds? So why is the establishment media so quiet about an equally outrageous story involving Social Security Administration bureaucrats partying at an Arizona resort? Austin Hill's Townhall.com column exposes the story others are ignoring:

Last week the Social Security Administration flew approximately 700 of its managers from across the U.S. and Guam to Phoenix, Arizona’s posh Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Resort, for “organizational training.” The event, which included musical entertainment and dancing, skits, catered food, cocktails, and a “casino night” featuring “door prizes,” cost us lowly taxpayers approximately $750,000. ...Ignore the fact that SSA is estimated to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year in faulty overpayments.” ...forget all that stuff. Pay no attention to the fact that our overnment is bankrupt. The managers of our Social Security Administration needed to get out of the office, come together face-to-face, let their hair down and have some fun together, do some “team building,” and get trained on how to “reduce workplace stress.” And when William La Jeunesse of the Fox News Channel showed up at the resort asking to speak to the SSA, the childish incompetence of our public servants was put on display for all the nation to see. ...So La Jeunesse wanted to know why the SSA’s taxpayer funded retreat was okay, when the AIG Corporation’s retreat was not. “There’s a clear distinction between the two” SSA Spokesperson Peter Spencer explained. “They (the AIG Corporation) received specific bailout funds, we did not…” Mr. Spencer was, of course, playing the American people for fools. Whether you call it “bailout funds” or an operating budget, government money is our money, the people’s money. All the money that government possess comes from our tax payments. And while American workers in the “real world” face layoffs, pay-cuts, the elimination of expense accounts, and moratoriums on corporate travel and entertainment ( wasn’t the annual “holiday party” eliminated at your place of employment a year or two ago?), it is disgraceful that government employees think its okay to sit in the lap of luxury at our expense.