US housing department to spend $165,000 on own furniture as it faces $6.8bn budget cut – By Jon Swaine (theguardian.com) / Feb 28 2018
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) has agreed to spend $165,000 on “lounge furniture” for its Washington headquarters, in addition to a $31,000 dining set purchased for housing secretary Ben Carson’s office.
The revelations on Tuesday of Carson’s expensive decor spending come as Donald Trump’s administration has proposed a cut of $6.8bn to Hud’s annual budget, or roughly 14% of its total spending, which would lead to reductions in programs aimed at poor and homeless Americans.
Department officials signed a contract last September with an Indiana-based seller for the furniture, according to a federal procurement record.
Raffi Williams, a spokesman for Hud, said in an email Tuesday evening that further records on the lounge furniture contract were not immediately available.
Earlier on Tuesday it emerged that the department had agreed to spend $31,000 on a dining table and accompanying items for Carson’s offices. Last week, Williams falsely denied to the Guardian that such a table had been bought.
Details of the furniture purchases were revealed after a senior career official at Hud alleged in a complaint to a federal watchdog that she was demoted after refusing to break a $5,000 spending limit for improvements to Carson’s office.
Helen Foster said she was told “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair” after informing her bosses that this was the legal price limit for improvements to Carson’s suite of offices. Her complaint was filed to the office of special counsel (OSC).
Williams made false statements to the Guardian in emails last Friday while an article on Foster’s claims was being prepared.
“When it comes to the secretary’s office, the only money HUD spent was $3,200 to put up new blinds in his office and the deputy secretary’s office,” Williams said in an email, declaring this information to be “on background” without prior agreement.
Asked to confirm, as the Guardian had been told by a source, that “a new dining-room-style table was also purchased”, Williams replied: “Yeah, that’s inaccurate.” After news of Foster’s complaint was followed by US media, Williams confirmed on Tuesday that $31,000 was in fact spent on a new dining set for Carson’s offices.
A separate federal procurement record states that Hud agreed last December to pay $31,561 to Sebree And Associates, a Baltimore-based furniture seller. The contract is described as being for “secretary’s furniture”.
Williams, 29, is a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, where he served as a deputy to Sean Spicer, Trump’s former White House press secretary. Williams is the son of the Fox News presenter Juan Williams.
When asked on Tuesday to explain his misleading statement, Williams falsely stated that he had been asked only about spending on improvements to Carson’s office from what he called “the decorating budget”.
“That’s what you were asking about, was the decorating budget, and no table was bought with the decorating budget,” said Williams. He then claimed he had actually been unaware a table had even been bought. “I walked over there and there was no new table there, so I did not know,” he said. “I did not find out until much later.”
Williams then said that he had another phone call coming in and terminated the interview
PB/TK – For a group of people who bitched during the 2016 campaign about government spending they sure are spending a ton of money. You can’t spend eight years complaining of Obama spending habits only to do more yourself and use a foreign business to help too boot. $31,000 dinnerware set yet complaining about people on Food Stamps, it’s time for government to go on a true spending diet and it begins with voting ALL these jagoffs out
