Federal employees and members of the Secret Service have been behaving so badly lately, Joe Francis is probably embarrassed for them.

First there was the infamous General Services Administration conference for 300 employees held in 2010 in Las Vegas — an $820,000 monument to excess and decadence, all at taxpayer expense. The details and recriminations are still unfolding.

Then this week, it was reported that as many as 20 Secret Service and military personnel engaged in extracurricular hijinks last week in a hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, during President Obama's trip there. Among the allegations: Agents were cavorting with prostitutes.

The two scandals are different in that the GSA conference involved wasting public funds, made even more egregious because it occurred during a time of economic hardship for many Americans and escalating federal budget deficits and debt.

By contrast, the Secret Service misconduct appears to be mostly embarrassing to an agency that usually is held in high esteem by the public for its professionalism and dedication to protecting the lives of the president and other government officials.

?Still, both incidents represent betrayals of the public's trust. These employees are supposed to serve us, not use their positions for personal privilege.

The GSA conference in particular is symptomatic of bloated government. Byzantine layers of bureaucracy make it exceptionally difficult to maintain accountability — the left hand does not know what the right one is doing. Isolated and insulated from scrutiny, it becomes easy to spend other people's money. Individuals who would never use even a modest fraction of their paychecks to purchase extravagances, or who would at least do their homework beforehand to ensure they would be getting their money's worth, have no such caution or compunction when it's the faceless American taxpayer footing the bill.

Of course, the irony in all that is the GSA is the federal agency that is supposed to ensure that Uncle Sam is spending taxpayer dollars most wisely.

That phenomenon isn't limited to mid-level federal employees who might believe they deserve a thrilling week in Vegas to escape the bureaucratic blues. It also manifests itself in the halls of Congress and the White House with those who hold the nation's purse strings.

So it's easy to get outraged over absurdly wasteful GSA parties; indeed, in a rare instance of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats are cooperating to aggressively investigate the matter.

But when the fiscal stakes are higher, involving multi-billion-dollar programs with avid constituencies, there's a temptation to dismiss waste and inefficiency as the price of doing business. Proposed funding cuts to the behemoth are portrayed as being crippling, no matter the amount. Even a potential reduction in the rate of growth is viewed as heartless, unconscionable, a sure sign of political extremism. And so the stasis persists.

Those responsible for the GSA debacle deserve to be punished. But don't think that cleaning up that mess restores even a semblance of fiscal sanity to Washington. The solons of squander will giddily sacrifice some foolish bureaucrats on the altar of accountability if it will distract the public from their own exorbitant spending practices that have put the nation on the path to ruin.

REPRINTED FROM THE PANAMA CITY NEWS HERALD