While a record number of homes are being lost to foreclosure and the unemployment rate has stagnated around 10%, the US State Department is going through liquor like it’s free water. In fact, the department racked up a $300,000 bill last year alone.

Months after President Obama urged federal agencies last year to cut wasteful spending, the U.S. Department of State paid $3,814 to fill an order of Jack Daniel’s whiskey for gratuities at one of its many overseas embassies.

The booze buy wasn’t unusual.

Last year alone, the State Department sent taxpayers tabs totaling nearly $300,000 for alcoholic beverages — about twice as much compared to the previous year, according to an analysis of spending records by The Washington Times.

In other words, the Obama Administration literally doubled the amount the State Department spends on liquor. And the two previous years under the Bush Administration were the early stages of the recession when unemployment wasn’t near-double-digit.

The purchases, small and large, included $2,483 to pay for “assorted spirits for gratuities to vendors” at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York, and $9,501 in “Christmas gratuities” of whiskey and wine at the U.S. Embassy in South Korea.

The State Department’s response? Its expenditures are legal. Seriously, the federal department responded to an inquiry about wasted money by insisting it’s legal to waste the money. Because that’s the concern Americans had; that this would somehow violate federal law. Not that, you know, the money is being wasted.

The U.S. Embassy in Germany, for instance, spent $555 in December on gratuities that included 15 bottles of Jim Beam bourbon and three dozen coffee mugs. In a country well-known for making fine beers, the U.S. Embassy in Belgium paid more than $5,000 by opting for “red and white wine for Christmas gratuities,” records show.

The U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg spent $7,160 on alcoholic beverages for “gratuities for local contacts,” while the U.S. Embassy in Greece last year spent more than $20,000 for “representational liquors for Christmas gratuities.”…

The U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica bought “laser pens with USB drive,” documents show. The embassy in Sarajevo bought chocolate gift boxes from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Co., while the embassy in Botswana bought mugs.

The list goes on and on and on. It goes to show just how disconnected the federal government is from the average American citizen. While we’re struggling to pay our mortgages the State Department is buying high-priced liquor like there are money trees growing everywhere in Foggy Bottom.