-By Warner Todd Huston
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a perfect example of an agency that needs to be cut back, defunded, and dis-empowered. A recent examination of its budget shows that it has spent tens of millions on assembling its own private army replete with aircraft, machine guns, body armor, and tanks not to mention money wasted helping foreigners push “global warming” and unnecessary “grants” given to partisan, left-wing groups to push so-called “environmental justice.”
Open the Books, a watchdog group out of Illinois run by Adam Andrzejewski, has released an oversight report showing the waste, fraud, and abuse endemic in the EPA and proves that this agency is ripe for reform.
“Our report discovered that when the EPA comes knocking they are armed with a thousand lawyers, arrest/criminal data, credit, business and property histories, plus a ‘Special Agent’ with the latest in weaponry and technology,” Open The Books notes.
Each of these so-called “special agents” cost the American Taxpayer $216,000 per year, the report finds.
Now, before we get further into the utter waste and illicit spending on itself, we need to also point out the money the EPA wastes by throwing it out at unworthy private entities in “grants.” Open The Books (OTB) discovered that the agency spent over $72 billion giving grants to outside groups and non-governmental organizations for their partisan, left-wing causes.
To put that waste in context, if the EPA were a private organization that $72 billion in grants would make it the number one grant-making organization in the USA. Even Bill and Melinda Gates only gave out $3.3 billion in grants in 2013.
That is astonishing, is it not?
As to its spending on itself, the EPA has spent at lease $715 million creating its own army. Here is how OTB describes that spending.
Since 2006, the Criminal Enforcement Program spent at least $715 million according to EPA disclosed budgets estimates. The EPA titles their “police officers” as “Special Agents.” Outfitting the 200 “Special Agents” to protect the environment and investigate enviro-crime is a costly endeavor. The EPA disclosed spending includes tens of millions of dollars in checkbook spending on “guns up to 300MM,” “ammunition up to 300MM,” “body armor,” “camouflage and deceptive equipment,” “unmanned aircraft,” “amphibious assault ships,” “radar,” “night vision,” joint “Homeland Security” projects, and much more –
Why does the EPA need all this major military hardware? The truth is, it does not.
Then there was the millions wasted on high end office equipment.
According to OTB, “On Office Furniture, the EPA spent over $92.4 million since year 2005. With current workforce of 15,500 that’s an average of $6,000 per employee in furniture allowance. Spending included $48.4 million on upscale vendors such as Herman Miller and Knoll.”
Again, the EPA spent $6,000 per employee on office furniture!
This is intolerable, certainly. The EPA needs to be slashed to the bone. And after it was responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in recent years, it has proven to be just as dangerous to the environment as the corporations it persecutes!
But this is government. And the EPA is really no different than any other federal agency. It is why all of them need to be cut down, defunded, and wiped out.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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