USDA Economic Action Program

Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its weekly spending cut alert aimed at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Economic Action Program (EAP). Its elimination would save taxpayers $5 million in 2011 and $25 million over five years.Originally established under the Forest Service’s dubious mission of helping rural communities take advantage of natural resources, the EAP has become an annual source of pork. Its funding, which is controlled entirely by Congress, has been heavily earmarked (often anonymously) and wasted on tasks clearly outside the Forest Service’s mission. It provided $10,000 to Washington’s Pacific County Water Music Festival in 1997, and has funded wastewater treatment studies, community centers, and manufacturing facilities, mostly in the Pacific Northwest.A March 1, 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that federal economic development programs are duplicative and wasteful. The GAO identified $6.5 billion in funding for 80 separate economic development programs at the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, and the Small Business Administration, 46 of which may be addressing overlapping issues or populations. According to the GAO, USDA manages 31 economic development programs and lacks “quality data on program outcomes.” The GAO has repeatedly advocated consolidation of development programs, but USDA has “taken only limited steps to fully address GAO’s concerns.”...more

But the R's could only find $61 billion in cuts and they're getting ready to negotiate part of that away.