and napa wine country second to the las vegas conference that we talked about so much about was the intern conference in palm springs, california where it appears at least that $66,000 were spent on hotel rooms alone, leading congressman john mica to this conclusion. smelled a rat. and we asked for data because if you look at the budget and expenditures for the public buildings commissioner, they went from $2.9 million in 2007 to 9 million. another leading lawmaker today threatened to rip the gsa apart if lawmakers didn t start getting straight answers. shep. shepard: well, the investigators were watching that gsa administrator jeff neeley and jeff neeley knew they were watching him and he just kept traveling. that s right. as recently as february and march of this year, as
guest: well, that is not it at all. i try to keep a light side. this is the dark issue because it is a horrible abuse of taxpayer money and we have known there was, you know, a skunk in the woodpile because we have been trying to get this information for over a year. almost every hearing and some of whom we dragged the people into freezing, cold, empty federal buildings where they are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and we cannot get them to stop sitting on federal assets. stuart: do you have any proof that it is not just this one conference, this one agency, and this is wide-spread. guest: we also, throughout last week, the intern conference, today we talked about hawaii and we talked about
million miles in 39 missions. we ll bring you more what it means for the future of space travel. president obama blames oil speculators for the soaring gas prices. a short time ago call forward tougher measures to crack down on the speculators. he wants to require traders to put more of their own money and increase the penalties for manipulating the markets. republicans blame the president s policies for the rising prices. he says drilling alone is not going to solve the problem. politicians who say if we just drilled more then gas prices would come down. we have been drilling more. under my administration america is producing more oil than at any time in the last eight years. more outrage over the lavish $800,000 conference in vegas paid for with right, your tax dollars. lawmakers are holding another round of hearings on the spending scandal at the gsa. they say huge amounts spent on food, parties, hurts the reputation of all federal employees even those not involved.
interns were flown in from around the country, at taxpayer expense. there are other details coming out about this conference. by the way, this was an annual event for gsa interns. we re also finding out that the palm springs conference for interns, not a top gsa official actually had a room at the resort and spa where the room had not one but two fireplaces and the room had its own spa, so this comes in the wake of more disclosures about the lavish, extravagant expenses that taxpayers paid for for the las vegas trip. this palm springs intern conference was separate from the las vegas conference held in october 2010. there are a number of hearings coming up next week on ul of this. we re going to be covering it for you. back to you megyn. megyn: object the one hand, you have to hand it tom, liz, it was representative of the life the interns would lead if they should wind up working for the gsa! that s a good point! on top of all this, megyn, we re also seeing evidence
we bought it give it time guys. the problem with the entire debate, is that there are bigger issues. the approximate owes. and there is a 120 year eeled post office and largely empty. and if we could stop this. steve, this is a great object lesson as to what happens if you have a government large as ours. things get out of control, right. it is like the window theor in crime. let one window go and maul things add up to big symboluc of the way it is run . this thing is out of control. i tell you something, this is a cultural issue. that intern conference in the palm spripping riveria resort and spa. those conferences went on year after year. i am saying what not.