The Washington Post ran a short piece on October 26 that reported on $2.6 million flushed down the drain by the Department of Agriculture. Federal auditors looked at housing subsidies handed out after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and found: “Based on discussions with disaster victims, we concluded that much of the $2.6 million in emergency rental assistance that [the department] provided to disaster victims was unnecessary.” Apparently, officials overlooked basic accounting controls and most of the covered costs were already paid for by another federal agency.

After reading such stories, I wonder: Will any official get fired? Shouldn’t officials at least apologize to us for wasting our hard-earned dollars? How is this sort of wasteful tax-and-transfer activity any different than bank robbery?