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Could potentially do. julie, thank you very much. the story we ll continue to watch. we sure will. jon: today is good friday, a solemn day for christians around the world who mark the crucifixion of jesus christ. worshipers in jerusalem, walking in the city s procession there, and at the vatican, pope den pweubgt xvi himself leading the passion of the lord. gregg burke is streaming live from rome. greg. reporter: jon, well, as we speak the pope is in saint peter s basilica leading this momemration of the passion, a very solemn ceremony, essentially a number of parts to it, there are several readings, reminding all those present of their since and the need for conversion, then the adoration of the cross, then the communion service, this is one of the few days of the year in the catholic year where there is no mass but a communion service. it is a very busy four days for pope benedict xvi. it kicked off yesterday with two different passes mass, one in the morning for priests and on ....
And balanced debate, fox news contributor and radio talk show host monica crowley, julie labinski, also with us, fox news contributor, former communications for senator jon corzine. this 800 some thousand dollar gsa conference in las vegas featured a clown, $7000 worth of sushi and a team building exercise to build a bicycle. monica, is this our government at work? yes. actually, the bicycle training cost us about $75,000, jon. and also, you left out a mind reader. we paid for a mind reader in this. look, unfortunately for these tkp-fplt sa employees, what happened in vegas didn t stay in vegas, but fortunately for the taxpayer, we now know what went down, and actually, there was a grand total of seven gsa trips to las vegas before the actual conference, because they said they needed to do some dry runs so make sure that the conference was going to go off without a hitch. this is yet another ....
Disrespect for our money, jon, that has so many americans outraged. jon: julie, if i have the chronology right here, martha johnson, who was the head of the gsa, fired her two top administrators and then resigned herself. now, you say that this kind of thing goes on under republican and democratic administrations, but why should the obama administration not be called to account for this outrage? well, they were called to task, as soon as they found out about it, they fired people. jon: they was under investigation for a year. let s not forget, this happened under the bush administration with the previous gsa administrator who also was fired by the bush administration for inappropriate behavior and her chief of staff was fired for being involved in the jack abermoff scandal. this was not limited to the obama administration. when you have this humungous government bureaucracy, as you do in any bureaucracy, you re going to have bad apples. there s no excuse for the situation but the b ....
Outrageous story about the waste, fraud and abuse we see in government and politicians on both sides of the aisle always say we re going to do our best to root out this waste, fraud and abuse and still this kind of thing is going on and we wonder why we re wracking up $5 trillion in the national debt over the course of the last # 1/2 years. jon: julie, this is the agency charged with, you know, being a manager, managing federal properties, that kind of thing. yeah, there s no monica is absolutely right, there s no excuse whatsoever for this kind of behavior and the bottom line is that as long as this kind of behavior happens, the taxpayers have absolutely no confidence that this kind of thing don t go on and on. it happens under the republican administrations, it happens under democratic administrations, they are entitled bureaucrats who think the taxpayers money is their money and there s no excuse for that kind of behavior. jon: it raises the bigger question about the growth in ....
Previous administrations, it happened under this administration, whoever the next president is, it will happen under his administration, because the bottom line, when you have a bureaucracy, there s a few bad apples. jon: that sounds like a good argument for shrinking the size of the federal government. i don t care if you shrink it tele50 percent, you re going to have a bunch of dopes in there that are going to treat the taxpayer like it s their own little piggy bank. absolute you re absolutely right about this, the government has no profit motive, the spending is completely out of control, we ve seen an explosion in the growth of government, so you have more in the work force and a greater opportunity for corruption. there s no accountability for any of the money they re spending and i think the american people have said enough, because we ve never had these kinds of debt levels before or annual decifits, so the american people are saying we ve had enough of this. jon: we know ....