Taxpayer money shouldn’t be used to remodel the private offices of public employees into little palaces.
It’s really not brain surgery, but, for whatever reason, brain surgeon Ben Carson doesn’t seem capable of grasping that simple good government principle.
Now Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is calling on the neurosurgeon-turned-Housing-and-Urban-Development-secretary to give an account for his allegedly lavish spending on redecorating. That’s a good start. Under his watch, the agency spent $31,000 — an amount about half the median annual income of the average U.S. household — on a new dining room set. One whistleblower alleges she was demoted when she warned that the spending exceeded the $5,000 limit. A surrogate acting on behalf of the secretary’s wife, Candy Carson, reportedly scoffed: “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair.”
The Carson family must not know about the IKEA catalogue, then. They should familiarize themselves with those offerings, before gathering their receipts from earlier purchases and preparing for congressional testimony.
The Trump administration has a credibility problem. Secretaries charter private planes and military jets when they shouldn’t, they pose with sheets of cash when they shouldn’t, and they buy egregiously expensive furniture when they shouldn’t. This subsidized robber baron chic is tacky. It clashes with the everyman populist image that President Trump worked hard to cultivate.
Carson is especially in danger. Whoever authorized the purchase of the dining room set is irrelevant. It’s his responsibility to oversee spending and it doesn’t stop with just some tables and chairs. Then there will be a new set of dishes and cutlery. Maybe even new drapes and a desk for the office. Excessive spending tends to compound. By the end, a good faith actor like Carson could be ruined by indiscretion.
To prevent that end, Carson must return the furniture and prepare for the hearing.
