Failure is rewarded in Washington, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is a prime example. Its squandering of money after last year’s hurricane season was astounding even by government standards.

If Republicans had a shred of principles, they would have used the fiasco to argue that responding to natural disasters is not a proper role of the federal government. Instead, FEMA gets a bigger budget.

The Associated Press reports on new evidence of FEMA’s reckless stewardship of taxpayer funds:

In the neighborhood President Bush visited right after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. government gave $84.5 million to more than 10,000 households. But Census figures show fewer than 8,000 homes existed there at the time.

…The pattern was repeated in nearly 100 neighborhoods damaged by the hurricanes. At least 162,750 homes that didn’t exist before the storms may have received a total of more than $1 billion in improper or illegal payments, the AP found. The AP analysis discovered the government made more home grants than the number of homes in one of every five neighborhoods in the wake of Katrina.

…[T]he AP’s findings are similar to those of a February report by the Government Accountability Office, which found hurricane aid was used to pay for guns, strippers and tattoos. The GAO concluded that between $600 million and $1.4 billion was improperly spent on Katrina relief alone. In one neighborhood GAO scrutinized, at least one person gave an address as a cemetery. Records show FEMA gave 27,924 assistance grants worth $293 million in that neighborhood. The AP’s analysis shows only 18,590 homes existed, meaning up to $98 million in aid could have been disbursed improperly or illegally.