Sen. Boxer Urges GSA To ‘Clean House’

Barbara Boxer knows a thing or two about corruption. She can tell you first hand that when you have someone abusing taxpayer money, they won’t stop unless they get fired.

Washington (CNN) — Describing the billions of dollars in contracts and services handled by the General Services Administration as a den of temptation, senators from both parties called Wednesday for the agency at the center of a spending scandal to clean house as it roots out corruption.

“The party’s over,” declared Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, at the third congressional hearing in three days on the controversy that has embarrassed the Obama administration in an election year.

Speaking to GSA Inspector General Brian Miller and Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini, Boxer said the panel “will support you and encourage you to clean house” at the vast federal procurement agency.

At the same time, Boxer emphasized that the GSA has a history of misconduct dating back decades under Republican and Democratic administrations, and that it was a person appointed by President Barack Obama who uncovered the latest wrongdoing.

Boxer and other Democrats sought to frame the controversy as an ongoing problem at GSA rather than anything unique to the Obama administration, and Republicans on the panel cited what they called a systematic failure resulting from a culture of misconduct at the agency.

Ranking Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said of the GSA that “if there’s anyone who has a propensity to do something dishonest, that’s where they ought to be” because “they deal with huge numbers.”

“I am concerned that this type of waste has become an embedded part of the culture at the GSA,” Inhofe said, noting the wrongdoing occurred at a time of fiscal austerity, including calls by Obama to cut government waste. “One can only wonder what kind of waste would have occurred in a better economy.”

Boxer later used an extended closing statement to encourage Tangherlini to take substantive steps to solve the problems at GSA once and for all, no matter what it takes.

“There still are ugly things that are going to come out. Let’s face it,” Boxer said of continuing investigations by Miller.