Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee this week on a new report unveiling more government waste. Grassley says the General Accounting Office report details how the Department of Defense wasted one-hundred-million dollars on airline tickets for federal employees since 1997. He says the tickets were purchased but never used. Grassley says airline tickets purchased by federal agencies can be returned for full credit for up to six years, yet that wasn’t done and 100-million dollars “went down a rathole.” He says the report also found incidents where federal employees were reimbursed for airline tickets they never even purchased. Some of them, he says, could face charges. Grassley says the fact no controls are in place to see the taxpayers’ dollars are recovered is inexcusable. He says the fact the Pentagon didn’t even know the money was being wasted before the G-A-O report is even worse than the loss of the 100-million. Grassley is to testify tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9 A.M. Central before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
