Your tax dollars at work, folks.

via WaPo

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) was prepped for an appropriations hearing on the defense budget when he took his turn Wednesday afternoon, flipping papers on his lap, reading from them and commending the witness for his department’s prompt response to a letter Coats had sent about a military accounting office in his home state.

It was all fairly innocuous except for one problem: Coats was in the completely wrong hearing complimenting the wrong witness.

After he’d finished a lengthy opening to his question, a staffer slipped Coats a piece of paper. Coats read it to himself, looked up, and said, “I just got a note saying I’m at the wrong hearing.”

“Well, that would explain why I didn’t know anything about this letter,” said David Cohen, undersecretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.