That sounds like an old musician's joke.

Q: What do you call a trombonist with a pager?
A: An optimist.

Really old and not really funny unless you're a musician.

Brass players have great lips!

We've got some great ones locally who are literally show stoppers. I have no problem with buying musical instruments for the military bands funding, or exercise equipment.

Personal taste.

could have been clarinets.

... whenever Dems complain about Rep actions.

No problem, we can put them to good use in 2021.

Another reason the government is not a business: no business is required to be flat broke on the last day of the fiscal year.

It’s not that the BUSINESS is required to spend all it’s money, it’s that a department does it to ensure next years funding. There was always a big quarter-end spending bump in IT if a dept didn’t spend all it’s money.

heavy utensils don't count

the GOP can finally get rid of Social Security and Medicare. In the meantime, Trumps friends in all the various agencies are doing their jobs biggly.

Whoever is sitting in that $9000 chair surely got one.
Follow the money trail...

have a bigger checkbook. I worked in state and local government for 30 years, most often overseeing procurement, and always hated the last three months of the fiscal year. I can't count how many times I had irate people arguing with me for refusing to sign off on ridiculous last minute purchase requests.

This isn't something new with Trump and it will remain a problem long after he's gone. The answer to it, if there is one, will need to be far more systemic, and will prove incredibly more difficult to root out, than simply ridding ourselves of particular individuals.

I experienced this every quarter. If we don't spend all of our money our budgets would get cut and have.

WPAFB in the 50's and 60's and at the end of every fiscal year all the guard houses were remodeled and landscaped or what ever but they always spent every penny and then ask for more the next year. as a result I am not a huge fan of military spending

funds. As the office manager of a department, I always made sure to use it for office supplies for the coming year(s). You can stockpile a lot of supplies if you have storage space. Also made sure that we had enough supplies for classrooms and clinics. We never knew what the next year's budget would be.

Employed by a fed grant when grant cycle was almost done we always hoped we didnt have much left over

At my DoD cammand, we made sure to spend every last cent.

What the federal gov't should do is reward efficiency by giving back some of any unspent funds in the form of bonuses to employees of the organization. I don't think I ever met any federal civil servant who liked spending year end money just to spend it on the theory that you get less next year if you give back money.

Spend it or lose it.

they abuse the use of funds. Whoever signed off on these purchases needs to lose their job NOW.

or knows how to spend wisely, but year end spending to sop up excess money happens in every agency.

Shameless beyond measure.

Shameful.

And the supervisors who approved these lavish expenses should be put on final warning.

I’m going to look into donating to that watchdog group. They’re doing what the I.G.’s are supposed to be doing.
on edit: here’s the link to donate, if anyone else would like to: https://secure.anedot.com/openthebooks/give

This makes me so fucking angry!

review such expendatures and deduct those that are extravagent.
Money should be allocated for usefull things not luxuries.

This one is pretty disgusting. I remember when Dennis Kucinich was asked how he would pay for universal health care. His reply was to cut Pentagon spending by 10% and have them account for the 5 Trillion dollars that they literally could not account for.

They ought to be able to save unspent funds just in case something unexpected comes up in the future. The policy only encourages this kind of waste.

.......

The only positive from this is that tRump didn't get to spend it on that damned wall......
.

Trump plans to steal money from military construction funds.

Isn’t this the kind of wasteful spending they vowed to put a stop to?

Tea Party actually had righteous roots after the 2008 financial crisis, and came out against Wall Street and the banks. The anger now has been transposed to other targets (immigrants, liberals, "Demo rats", etc.) Co-opted and radicalized.

I could eat $4.6 Million in lobster tail and crab all by myself!

otherwise, a foreign country like Russia might subvert our democracy.

460,000!

Even if they paid gold-plated hammer corporate welfare prices of say $100 per, that is 46,000 meals.

Forty Six Thousand meals at $100 per.

Check to see if any contractors gave kickbacks or diverted shipments, etc.

At $2 per, that is 2,300,000 breakfasts for school children, the very people the Republicon-Trump Party is trying to squeeze. Or a year's worth of breakfasts for 10,000 school children.

Ten Thousand Children.

I was trying to picture how many crabs and lobster tails you could buy with $4.6 million. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it though. I can't even visualize that many crabs or lobster tails and can't imagine who is going to eat them!

Yeah, sounds like some kind of kickbacks, something sleazy and illegal.

From the report:

In total, the Department of Defense spent $2.3 million crab (snow crab, Alaskan king crab, and crab legs and claws) and another $2.3 million on lobster tail.

HUGE spread of cheap pedestrian fast food, covering an entire table.

That was embarrassing!

Please support Medicare for All.

I'm all for having a party to improve morale but it would perhaps be the understatement of the half century to call this sum "excessive".

But shit like this we got all the money in the world for!

these are non-essential items but they boost moral

Mainly as crab cake, crab legs, etc.

Lobster shows up at least in cooking competitions.

But I suspect that a lot of it and crab are stored as supplies to be cooked for distinguished visitors, the Pentagon brass' special dining rooms, etc.

You might be able to justify this in that the items can be used or consumed by the troops, but only one behind will be plunked in that chair. Whose valuable derriere is it? Hope the damn chair was at least made in the USA.

We had seafood every Friday when I was at overseas bases, we called it fish Friday.

Just about every base has a golf course, a gym, every military branch has a band, etc.

All that is really a drop in the bucket when you consider that every month we pay military members several billion dollars for food and housing. Then if they go eat lobster at the mess hall or galley on Friday they pay for their meal from their monthly BAS.