Under the old Soviet system, members of the Politburo, the Party Central Committee, and other top-ranked Communists were insulated from the chronic shortages and long lines that were the bane of their countrymen.
The government’s highest officials shopped at special stores stocked with delicacies; they had access to better medicines. Some VIPs were supplied hot meals prepared by Kremlin chefs.
In its better days, the United States was appalled by such an undemocratic system. Today, we tolerate our own leaders demanding luxury at the expense of the rest of us.
One of the most discouraging aspects of staggering government waste is the number and supposed caliber of the people who now defend it. When it came to light last month that Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small has spent $90,000 on unauthorized luxuries — in addition to charging more than $1 million for renting out his home for official functions — the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents rushed to defend him. The chairman of the board is none other than U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Part of the problem is that so many people now share in government largess that they all have an interest in sustaining it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew she could demand from the White House a government jet to fly her to California and back — costing taxpayers around $400,000 each trip — because President George W. Bush would not risk angering a Congress that might cut back on his perks.
Indeed, Bush not only laps up every privilege of an imperial presidency; he doles out luxuries such as Secret Service protection for members of his Cabinet. Now, it’s doubtful that al-Qaida has set its sights so low as to assassinate, say, the Secretary of Commerce.
These so-called security details are provided for convenience, not protection. When a Bush Cabinet secretary lived in my building, the Secret Service was nothing but expensive car service: picking him up in the lobby in the morning and dropping him off at night.
Anyone could have snuffed him in the elevator or as he worked out in the building’s gym. So why should taxpayers be stuck withthe tab for his expensive chauffeurs?
Or consider how many federal civilian agencies have their own fleet of aircraft that ferry government officials at tremendous expense to taxpayers. As best as the Government Accounting Office (GAO) can determine, civilian agencies own about 1,500 aircraft, costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion a year.
Certainly, some of those have legitimate functions, such as planes the U.S. Forest Service uses for fire-fighting. But who, if anyone, decides when the number of planes is excessive?
The Department of Justice says it needs airplanes to transport prisoners — but does it need hundreds of them? Why do agencies such as the Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation need any planes of their own?
Two years ago, the GAO reported that NASA is among the worst offenders, noting that its “analysis of NASA passenger aircraft flights for fiscal years 2003 and 2004 showed that an estimated 86 percent — about seven out of every eight flights — were taken to support routine business operations specifically prohibited by federal policy regarding aircraft ownership, including routine site visits, meetings, speeches, and conferences.”
The obvious question is how many other departments do the same thing? — but even Congress can’t get answers. The FBI refuses to account for certain of its aircraft. The Department of Interior won’t report on some of its planes, claiming they are used for “undercover operations.”
But without a central agency tracking missions, who knows if they overlap? The Drug Enforcement Agency uses a fleet of planes for interdiction and surveillance — as does the State Department for its Narcotics Eradication program. Even the Fish and Wildlife Service writes off some of its aircraft as “law enforcement.”
To their credit, a few members of Congress, such as senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have askedfederal civilian agencies to account for the use of their planes.
The answers are, at best, incomplete; at worst, they’re unsatisfactory — and the GAO says inappropriate use of aircraft “for non-mission activities” has been a problem since 1977.
Thirty years is long enough to wait for federal agencies to learn to follow the rules. It’s time for Congress to cut certain budgets and ground some of these high-flyers.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria.
