Opinion

Party on

It didn’t stay in Vegas — much to the chagrin of US General Services Administration head Martha Johnson.

Johnson resigned Monday — two years after her agency burned through $835,000 on a 300-bureaucrat bacchanalia in Las Vegas, and just days after word of the blowout became public.

GSA’s inspector general said planning alone for the event cost $136,504 — which included eight “scouting trips” to Sin City that averaged 14 staffers per trip — before the October 2010 “conference.”

Just who was conferring with whom over what isn’t clear — but attendees were entertained by a clown, a comedian and a psychic who couldn’t foresee that nothing good would come of the extravaganza.

Neither could Johnson, who should’ve known better.

A long-time Democratic operative — she worked in the Clinton White House, the Commerce Department and even as GSA chief of staff — Johnson appears to have forgotten the prime directive for political operatives: Never embarrass your principal.

That would be President Obama — no slouch at spending tax dollars himself — who famously said in February 2010: “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”

Unless, of course, you’re the General Services Administration.

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew declared Monday that the president “was outraged by [GSA’s] excessive spending, questionable dealings with contractors and disregard for taxpayer dollars.”

How hard must it have been for him to keep a straight face during that little lecture, we wonder — given that the administration has been paying the mortgage with MasterCard since it took office.

Alas, it shows no signs of stopping.