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LIMITED GOVERNMENT is a government structure where any more than minimal governmental intervention in
personal liberties and the economy is prohibited by law, usually in a written constitution.
It is closely related to libertarianism, classical liberalism, and some tendencies of conservatism in the United States.

The New York Times Berates "Brandishing Plastic for Uncle Sam" - but this takes more than hand-wringing

Published: April 11, 2008
 
 A New York Times unsigned editorial began, "Consider the State Department employee who slapped down a government credit card to buy $360 worth of boutique lingerie before heading off to drug enforcement training in the Ecuador jungle. Or the postal worker who ran up $14,000 in Internet dating services on his federal card. And a now legendary Forest Service official who used government credit to pay off $640,000 worth of gambling debts, car expenses and six years of mortgage payments. What makes it even more outrageous, is that it took a whistle-blower, not an internal monitor, to uncover this wholesale trashing of the government’s — i.e. the peoples’ — credit."

The Center has found that millions of dollars in improper government employee charges were uncovered in a 15-month spot check of several agencies by Congressional auditors.

A sample of $2.7 million in card purchases found more than $1.8 million worth of laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras had vanished, nowhere to be found.

No one has yet determined the full extent of waste, fraud and abuse by federal employees using government credit cards.

CDFE is no friend of regulation. Keeping government employees honest is not regulation, it's a duty to We the People.  Congress must following through on the Senate proposal now under consideration to impose regular audits by each department’s inspectors general, require second-party approval of credit purchases, deny cards to federal workers with poor personal credit and fire offenders for blatant abuses.

CDFE thinks government workers must meet a higher standard than the average credit card user - it's not their credit they're using, it's ours. That means no reprimands for abuses, fire them.

There are about 300,000 federal employees with government credit cards. We don't doubt that nearly all are honest. We know quite a few of them ourselves. They're even madder than us at the credit card abusers who give the whole government work force a bad name.

Weed out the abusers. Leave the honest government workers with a good name that can proudly be called public service.

other stories

06/29/03 MEDIA Sacramento Bee runs hit piece against Rep. Richard Pombo  Newspaper rips congressional defender of property rights and economic growth
08/23/02 Sierra Club's abuse of the courts cited by judge Time for Congress to shut down the Club's lawsuit mill?
08/21/02
Bush to Skip Earth Summit, Powell to Lead Team No cave-in to new demands from foundation-backed green groups.
 

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