Issa demands answers from VA on 'Patton' parody

Watchdog: Issa demands answers from VA on 'Patton' parody
August 20, 2012
Mark Flatten
Reporter
The Washington Examiner

Gen. George Patton probably would not be pleased with a parody video paid for with tax dollars by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). But there is no doubt about where U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa stands on it.

Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wants detailed documents from the VA on its spending on two conferences in Orlando last year that cost a combined $5 million.

Particularly irksome to Issa is the $52,000 allegedly spent by the VA to pay a professional actor and production company for an 18-minute video satirizing the opening scene of the 1970 film for which George C. Scott won an Academy Award. (See the original scene from the film in the embedded video player below.)

Issa wants a copy of the satire and an explanation. In a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, Issa called allegations about the Orlando conferences "eerily similar" to those involving the scandalous 2010 General Services Administration (GSA) conference in Las Vegas.

That gathering became infamous after the GSA Inspector General (IG) revealed in April that top administrators wasted taxpayer money on private parties, unnecessary pre-conference travel and gimmicks like a $75,000 bicycle building exercise.

In the letter sent last week to Shinseki, Issa noted that even before the GSA scandal, President Obama warned federal officials that "you cannot take a trip to Las Vegas or go to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime."
read more here