> I certainly don't want to pay for all the sales kickoff parties and conferences that the employees of my software vendors pay for, yet I still am forced to.

Yes, there is a difference between the way you treat government grants versus private voluntary sponsors. Such splurging of others money is bad. That private companies do it is unavoidable and impossible to mitigate. But you can definitely try to avoid it with government money.

> Benefits of exchange of information

You can sugarcoat "parties" how much ever you want, it remains a fact that it is not a necessary aspect of the conference.