Ben Carson needs a comfy chair. 5k not enuff for office decor (Representatives, Congress)
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For the sake of accuracy, the "whistleblower" here is saying that the HUD secretary who said that 5k wasn't enough for an office chair was Secretary Clemmensen, who was the HUD secretary PRIOR to Trump taking office. Secretary Carson wanted to re-decorate his office, understandably, and the "whistleblower", Helen Foster, told Secretary Clemmensen that there was a $5,000 limit for that. She was instructed to "find the money", and she followed procedure by reporting to the budget director the request to exceed the limit.
While she is credited for exposing a $10 million budget shortfall, her argument that this was the reason for her demotion is not proved. President Trump has had a pattern of demoting career bureaucrats, and appointing his own choices, and that may have very well be what happened here.
Its kind of bizarre there is a 5K limit. That's not much money at all. I think she was exaggerating by saying you can't even buy a single decent CHAIR for that, but you could easily spend that on a couple of chairs, 2 or 3. And a desk can easily be more than $5K.
I know that our "representatives" in Sacramento are allowed (or just do) spend far more than that on their office space.
Even members of Congress spend more than that PER office, and they often have 4 or 5 offices.
I think the only scandal here is the unreasonably low limit placed on the office furnishings space for a Cabinet head. That's disgraceful, when Congress is blowing through huge sums of money on expenses and multiple offices and cross country first class travel and such.
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