Inside The Now-Shuttered Federal Agency Where Employees Lived ‘Like Reigning Kings’

[mountaineer]

Inside The Now-Shuttered Federal Agency Where Employees Lived ‘Like Reigning Kings’
Employees of DOGE's latest target spent taxpayer money on exotic vacations, portraits, and more.
By  Luke Rosiak
Mar 19, 2025   DailyWire.com

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government. ...

FMCS seemed, quite clearly, to exist for the benefit of those on its payroll, and not much else. One employee told me: “Let me give you the honest truth: A lot of FMCS employees don’t do a hell of a lot, including myself. Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?” ...

Top FMCS official George Cohen used a “recreation and reception fund” to order champagne and $200 coasters for his office, and to purchase artwork painted by his wife. The tiny agency commissioned paintings of its top employees — as one employee told me, “like they were reigning kings or something…I’ve never seen anything like it before.” It spent $2,402 retouching the portrait of someone who briefly held the top job in an acting capacity.

FMCS employees “unblocked” their government credit cards to turn off typical abuse protections, then used them to apparently fund personal expenses and simply bill anything they’d like to the government. One employee leased a BMW; another (IT director James Donnen) billed the government for his wife’s cell phone, cable TV at both his home and his vacation home, and even his subscription to USA Today. ...

In a small city near me, there is a wholly voluntary group of business people and union execs who perform this function. No one freakin' needs federal bureaucrats.

[mountaineer]

This is why I laugh at my cousin's daughter, who loudly bemoans her possible DOGE-ing at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (formerly the Bureau of Public Debt). THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING!!!!

[mountaineer]

One of the 7 federal agencies shuttered by DOGE on Friday is the most DOGE-able agency of all time.  FMCS (before the pandemic!) had a 9-story K Street tower for 60 employees. Its halls were lined with oil paintings of those employees, and other art purchased from the boss's wife

https://twitter.com/lukerosiak/status/1902412374318923833

[DefiantMassRINO]

Every department, bureau, agency, and commission needs to justify its existence with a demonstrable, empirical, auditable track record for fulfilling the mission that justifies its existence; and provide proof of verified, valid, active Congressional authorization to expend Congressional appropriations.

Congress could eliminate many of these 'independent' agencies and commissions by revoking their Congressional authorization.

GOP Congress, get off your @$$e$ and demonstrate and justify why you should be re-elected in 2026.  Electing paper weights to Congress to accomplish nothing would save the American taxpayer much money.