More evidence to show that the Obama administration is completely out of their league has surfaced. The Interior Department Chief of Staff went white-water rafting with his wife in the Grand Canyon while the oil slick in the Gulf spread. He went on the taxpayer dime… and after his agency had already started coordinating the response to the spill.

Though his agency was charged with coordinating the federal response to the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland was in the Grand Canyon with his wife last week participating in activities that included white-water rafting, ABC News has learned.

Other leaders of the Interior Department were focused on the Gulf, joined by other agencies and literally thousands of other employees. But Strickland’s participation in a trip that administration officials insisted was “work-focused” raised eyebrows among other Obama administration officials and even within even his own department, sources told ABC News.

Strickland, who also serves as Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, was in the Grand Canyon with his wife Beth for a total of three days, including one day of rafting. Beth Strickland paid her own way, Obama administration officials said.

The Stricklands departed for the Grand Canyon three days after the leaks in the Deepwater Horizon pipeline were discovered. Ultimately, after the government realized that the spill was worse than had been previously thought, officials decided that Strickland was needed in the Gulf so Strickland was taken out of the Grand Canyon by a National Park Service helicopter.

One government official, asking for anonymity because of the political sensitivities involved, told ABC News that some Interior Department employees thought it was “irresponsible” for Strickland to have gone on the trip, given the crisis in the Gulf, which was fully apparent at the time he departed for the Grand Canyon.

… The White House has aggressively pushed back on any notions that the federal government did not immediately respond to the crisis, providing today a detailed timeline indicating the day by day response in terms of the total numbers of response vessels, feet of boom deployed, oily water recovered, and overall personnel responding, among other measures.

That timeline, however, might raise even more questions as to why the Assistant Secretary in charge of fish and wildlife — not to mention the Interior Department chief of staff — didn’t reconsider the timeliness of his trip to the Grand Canyon with his wife, however work-focused.

The explosion at Deepwater Horizon was on April 20, and Hayes and Barkoff arrived in the Gulf the next day.

On Saturday April 24, the first oil leaks were discovered.

On Tuesday, April 27, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that his department along with the Department of Homeland Security would launch an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon Incident. Salazar pledged “every resource we can to support the massive response effort underway at the Deepwater Horizon.”

Strickland and his wife arrived in the Grand Canyon that night.

Real smooth. Add in that after the attemped Christmas Day bombing Obama went golfing in Hawaii while the Director of National Counterterrorism Center went skiing, and it seems like this administration is more interesting in having fun than doing their jobs.