Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is calling on Congressional leaders to take another look at money for the National Science Foundation in the economic stimulus bill after an agency report said a senior official spent 20% of his working hours surfing porn on the internet.
Grassley, a Republican, spoke about the issue on a Fox News cable show today. Grassley says the employee had on-line chats of "sexually explicit" conversations and "you wonder who is watching the shop there." The report says the value of lost time for that one person was $58,000.
Grassley says he wants to know who else was surfing porn while they were supposed to be working. Grassley says this was just from one computer server and report says there is more than one person involved and he doesn’t know how many others might be involved. Grassley says he’s asking for more information from N-S-F so those in charge of the appropriation in Congress can take a closer look.
"Because when you’re appropriating $3-billion for an agency that only gets six billion and that’s stimulus, you wonder whether or not if they really need the money if they aren’t using the $6-billion as effectively as they ought too when its wasted, with a senior officials wasting $58,000 of his time for sexually explicit pornography," Grassley says.
The agency’s semi-annual report also said the employee charged more than 40-thousand dollars to his own credit card to look at porn while at work. Grassley has asked the National Science Foundation to turn over documents about this case and other situations like it at the foundation.
You can view part of the N.S.F. report here .