David Fahrenthold has another excellent article on waste in government in Sunday’s Washington Post. This time he finds a truly comic example of waste, duplication, and confusion:

[T]he U.S. government has at least 15 official definitions of the word “rural,” two of which apply only to Puerto Rico and parts of Hawaii.

All of these definitions matter; they’re used by various agencies to parcel out $37 billion-plus in federal money for “rural development.” And each one is different.…

There are 11 definitions of “rural” in use within the U.S. Department of Agriculture alone.

It’s laughable. But the real question is, Why does the federal government even need to define “rural”? Well, of course the answer comes back to the real purpose of our modern tax-and-transfer state: The definitions define who gets the subsidies.

Every year, there are billions available to fund projects in rural communities. Money for housing. Community centers. Sewer plants. Broadband connections.

In a sidebar to the story, we get some details. The Census Bureau has one definition of “rural” so it can tell us how many Americans live in rural areas. Here are the purposes of the other 14 definitions:

Used for a variety of loan and grant programs, all meant to foster rural development…for loans and grants for “community facilities” in rural areas… for aid for water and waste-disposal systems… for aid for improvements in telecommunications systems…by farm-credit associations making housing loans… for certain lending programs for rural community development…to determine areas served by Office of Rural Health…by the National Rural Development Partnership…for grants to rural institutions of higher education…to determine what areas of Hawaii are eligible for rural-aid programs…to determine what areas of Puerto Rico are eligible for rural-aid programs…by various rural development loan and grant programs.

So let’s see. People in rural areas pay federal taxes. People in urban areas pay federal taxes. All that money goes to Washington — where a great deal of it stays — and then some of it is used to provide programs and services in rural and urban areas. Maybe both rural and urban Americans would be better off keeping their money at home and paying for whatever services they think are actually worth the cost. And then the federal government wouldn’t have to pay handsome salaries to well-educated people to form task forces to determine 15 different definitions of “rural.” And states, cities, and rural areas wouldn’t have to hire expensive lobbyists to get a piece of that federal pie.