It only took only hours for the "$16 Muffin" to enter
the Washington political lexicon – right beside the $500
Pentagon hammer and the Bridge To Nowhere. The diatribes about
government waste came fast and loud, from the halls of Congress to
the pages of the Post and Times. The only problem: it wasn't
true.
The source seemed impeccable: the well-respected Inspector
General of the Department of Justice, whose 148-page audit report
mentioned the muffins nine times. The IG reported that taxpayer
money was squandered on muffins served at a Washington hotel for a
five-day conference in 2009 for the Justice Department to train 534
judges, lawyers and paralegals on the rules for deporting
immigrants.
It turned out the cost for the muffins -- along with a full
continental breakfast and afternoon snack -- was under $15 per
person daily. The same continental breakfast alone cost guests at
that hotel twice as much, even without the snack.
It turned out the bagels, crossaints, cookies, brownies and
chips that came with the morning muffins were mistakenly listed on
the hotel invoice for the afternoon snack. So the muffin math
didn't initially add up for the auditors. By the time they
recomputed, "Muffingate" was already viral. Small-print
corrections won't do much for the hotel kitchen staff who lose
hours as federal agencies suspend future conferences to review menu
costs. And if that old $500 hammer is any indication, we'll
hear for years -- or at least until next November -- about $16
federal muffins as yet another symbol of federal excess.
This isn't an argument for bloated federal perks. Far from it. From the Tea Party to MoveOn, Americans are angry at a political elite that can't or won't tell the truth about our problems. The message is: debate the solutions aggressively. Maybe that's even why we elected a divided government. But before ranting, get the basic facts right.
In this case, the misinformation came not from agenda-driven
politicians, but from a usually responsible source. But whether
it's about stale conference muffins, global warming or Social
Security -- the more careless hyperbole in our public rhetoric, the
less likely Washington will ever get anything worthwhile
done.
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