September 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - Federal bureaucrats have spent $1.7 billion on outrageous junkets, jetting to conferences about turtles in Greece, elephant training in Orlando and maritime issues in Fiji - all at taxpayers' expense, investigators found yesterday.
Spending on conferences spanning the globe has increased a whopping 14 percent a year.
"I think there are some highly questionable trips," fumed Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is probing the spending. "Can't we do better?"
Hundreds of government officials flew to conferences that just happened to be located on tropical islands, beach towns and touristy European capitals.
The cost hit $1.7 billion over the last six years, investigators said.
And feds often tacked on vacation days to their government-paid travel, Senate probers found.
The federal Commerce Department spent $84,000 sending 31 people to the International Sea Turtle Symposium on the island of Crete. The feds took a total of 81 days of annual leave on the trip.
Commerce sent another employee to a land-surveying conference in Honolulu - where the reimbursement rate is $225 per day.
To study "Strategies for Workforce Development," the Labor Department sent four people to one of the few remaining communist command economies: Vietnam.
Three people went Down Under to attend a mine rescue conference in Australia on the Labor Department's dime.
Among other astonishing findings:
· Homeland Security paid $1.5 million to send 842 FEMA employees to a medical conference in Reno, Nev.
· The Labor Department sent someone to Hong Kong to study occupational safety.
