There was much ado in recent days about a report suggesting that the federal government had paid $16 apiece for muffins that were served at a legal conference in 2009 at a Hilton Hotel in Washington. Cookies cost $10 each, and coffee was $8 for an 8-ounce cup, according to the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Justice Department.
For the record, the hotel says the costs listed in the report included not only food, but also service fees and the like. The Office of Inspector General basically stands by its report, however.
We’re not in a position to judge exactly who is right in this case, and whether the costs of the food provided were reasonable, though there certainly have been many discouraging previous reports of wasteful federal spending on all sorts of frivolous items.
But while the talk of $16, taxpayer-funded muffins understandably gets lots of attention, there is a tremendous irony in the fact that not nearly enough attention is being paid to federally funded Medicare, which within a few years is expected to run out of money to meet its obligations.
Vague talk of adjustments to Medicare sometime down the road has been offered, but few in Washington are realistically confronting the fact that Medicare will not survive very much longer without serious reform.
It’s all well and good to discuss trimming obvious federal spending abuses — such as expensive government conferences. But it is vastly more important that we begin to get a handle on the massive parts of the budget that are really making our national debt skyrocket — and that are endangering our nation’s economic future.