TUPELO – U.S. Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., on Wednesday called for the ousters of anyone responsible for a widely criticized $823,000 spending spree by the nation’s General Services Administration.

In a Twitter post shortly before noon, the 1st District congressman said “all of the people at GSA and the Obama administration responsible for allowing this to happen should be fired.”

The post then linked to a two-minute video highlighting the various expenditures related to an October 2010 conference the GSA held in Las Vegas. Included in the tally: Roughly $136,000 for planning, $146,000 for catering, $8,100 for yearbooks, $6,300 for commemorative coins and $3,000 for a mind-reader.

An Office of the Inspector General report issued April 2 found that “many of the expenditures on this conference were excessive and wasteful and that in many instances, GSA followed neither federal procurement laws nor its own policy on conference spending.”

GSA officials have been testifying this week before the House Committee On Oversight & Government Reform, none of whose members hail from Mississippi. During testimony on Monday, GSA Chief of Staff Michael Robertson told the committee an attorney in the White House knew about the lavish spending spree shortly after May 2011.

When contacted by the Daily Journal, Nunnelee said through a spokeswoman that “while the House of Representatives has been working hard to get our spending and debt crisis under control, people in the Obama administration have been throwing lavish parties for themselves in Las Vegas.

“Taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet in this economy and have every right to be furious when they see government bureaucrats wasting their money.”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle this week are calling for a clean sweep of the GSA. But some Democrats are defending the Obama administration. In a statement issued Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the GSA has a history of misconduct dating back at least to President Carter’s administration in the 1970s and continuing through both Republican and Democratic administrations.

She also noted that Obama had appointed the whistleblower who brought the most recent scandal to the GSA inspector general.

emily.lecoz@journalinc.com