Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, pinned the blame for his department’s purchase of a $31,000 dining room set for his office on his wife and staff. In testimony before the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday, Carson also said the reason he authorized the purchase of new furniture for his office was “safety.”
“People were stuck by nails, and a chair had collapsed with someone sitting in it,” the former neurosurgeon and 2016 Republican presidential candidate told lawmakers. Carson also suggested his wife, Candy, was responsible for making the extravagant expense and said he canceled when he discovered it.
“You know I’m not really big into decorating. If it were up to me, my office would probably look like a hospital waiting room. At any rate, I invited my wife in to come help me,” he said, adding that senior staff presented him with catalogs to choose from. “The prices were beyond what I wanted to pay and I made it clear that just didn’t seem right to me,” Carson said. “I left it with my wife, I said ‘help choose something.'”
Carson was appearing before the committee because the purchase exceeded the $5,000 limit beyond which the HUD secretary would need to get congressional approval. His comments continued what the WEEKLY STANDARD editors write this morning is “bizarre obfuscation and attempted justification” by Trump administration officials of the various over-the-top spending scandals emerging in recent months.
