It's a bunch of crap, as stated, not matching even what's claimed by the less-reputable sources I could find. Here's an OK-ish source that uses the same numbers

It's a bunch of crap, as stated, not matching even what's claimed by the less-reputable sources I could find. Here's an OK-ish source that uses the same numbers as even worse sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2015/10/01/epa-supersizes-furniture-cost-while-downsizing-2000-employees/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2015/10/01/epa... However, the story is 1) old, 2) overblown crap, and 3) I can't find any other angles on this to fill in gaps—I'm wondering in particular whether some of their choices of vendors are due to requirements to spend X% of their non-wage budget with US companies, or other, similar pressure. Regarding #2, once you work your way past the deliberately-bad use of math required to make this look like "news", it amounts to, "the EPA spent ~$600 per worker per year on office furniture and expenses related to office furniture like storage and moving fees"—which seems... entirely normal? Even low? The story only looks like a story at a glance because they intentionally misrepresent what's going on. All the pieces are there to figure it out, to their credit, but once you work through it it's not newsworthy whatsoever. This is, as they say, fake news. [EDIT] the piece also seems to rely on people not generally knowing what it costs to buy furniture that'll last 10+ years under heavy use. Even cheap large conference room tables are not cheap, actually. Now, if they're buying these then throwing them out after a couple years, and it's not just the political appointees at the top doing this, then there's reason to complain about the agency itself.