We all splurge from time to time. I’m not saying you should, I’m just pointing out that sometimes it happens. It becomes a big problem, though, when over-spending takes places at the federal level and officials decide to party on the taxpayer’s dollar.

3. Extravagance

The General Services Administration was under investigation in 2010 for a single “team-building” conference in Las Vegas that ran up a whopping $823,000.

Though one investigator stated that “the Las Vegas conference was not an anomaly,” the GSA isn’t the only culprit when it comes to lavish over-spending.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly spent $6.1 million dollars between two training conferences in Orlando. That’s enough money to support over 150 fully disabled veterans on disability pay for an entire year. The Office of Inspector General cites the following violations of protocol and ethics by VA administrators:

VA employees improperly accepting gifts including room upgrades, meals, limousine services, golf, spa services, helicopter rides, and tickets for the Rockettes.
Contract violations and lack of oversight that led to excessive costs and illegal or wasteful expenditures.
$97,906 VA spent on promotional items (including bags, pens, water bottles, and exercise bands) that were determined to be unnecessary and wasteful.

The list goes on. A Department of Justice conference in Istanbul cost taxpayers $1.8 million; a Federal Aviation Administration conference cost $5 million, and included meetings that ended with buffet cocktail parties; $5 million was spent in sending federal employees to Harvard for training courses they could (and should) have gotten elsewhere; and $400 million spent on a police training program in Iraq for Iraqi officers.

We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, but if we generously assume every year since 2010 only a fraction of the total amount of money outlined above was wasted, that still leaves us with one headache of a check to write.