August 10, 2007 7:10AM # Bureaucrats Run Up $13 Billion Travel Tab By [Daniel J. Mitchell](https://www.cato.org/people/daniel-mitchell) --- SHARE Federal bureaucrats spend as much as $13 billion each year on travel, though that number is just a rough guess since the government is too incompetent to keep track of expenses. It also is no surprise to learn, as [reported ](http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2945421)by the *Federal Times*, that the federal government has no ability to monitor how the money is being spent. Gee, one would almost think that there is a lesson to be learned about the likelihood of waste when bureaucrats get to spend other people’s money: > The government knows what it spends on travel but not how. The General Services Administration estimates agencies spend $11 billion to $13 billion a year on business trips, but lacks the ability to say exactly where the money goes. ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).