WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” over reports of lavish spending at the General Services Administration, senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday.
The GSA is under congressional investigation for spending more than $820,000 on a Las Vegas-area conference — a revelation that has led to other allegations about the agency’s practice of improperly billing taxpayers for meals, trips and other expenses.
“On the GSA issue, he was I think it’s fair to say — apoplectic,” Axelrod said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
AXELROD CALLS SECRET SERVICE SCANDAL ‘REALLY DISAPPOINTING’
“Because we made a big effort to cut waste, inefficiency, fraud against government, saved tens of billions of dollars doing it on just this very kind of thing. And so this was very enraging to him, and of course he acted quickly, the administration acted quickly and changed the management there.”
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Obama accepted the resignation of GSA Administrator Martha N. Johnson shortly before an inspector general’s report about the conference spending was released and several other employees were also forced out of their jobs. But Republicans have used the scandal to criticize Obama’s oversight of government agencies.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said both the GSA scandal and revelations that Secret Service agents brought Colombian prostitutes back to their hotel in Cartagena prior to Obama’s arrival in the city are symptoms of “government run amok.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has said the revelations cast doubt on Obama’s “managerial leadership.”
Axelrod pushed back on those accusations during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Do I think that the GSA problem is concerning? Yes,” Axelrod said. “And the president was furious when he learned of it. Obviously we’ve revamped the whole operation as a result of it. But is it emblematic of our administration? Absolutely not.”
In an appearance on “FOX News Sunday,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he was “sickened” by the scandals, but stopped short of saying Obama should be blamed for the misbehavior of government employees.
“It would be unfair to hold President Obama responsible for this outrageous behavior at the Secret Service and the GSA. But it is fair to hold a president accountable,” Lieberman said. “What do I mean? I mean, we have millions of federal employees. The responsibility for the abuse of authority at the Secret Service and the GSA really is the employees who did it and their supervisors.”
“But what do I mean when I say the president should be held accountable? The buck stops at the president’s desk,” he added. “He is the leader of our government. He now has to be acting with kind of relentless determination to find out exactly what happened and to make sure that people who work for him at the Secret Service and GSA and everywhere else in the government don’t let anything like this happen again.”