An End To Taxes Misallocated Down The Drain

As a supplement to the Obama administration's Fiscal Year 2010 Federal Budget, proposed to Congress in February and made public on Thursday, was the 119-page Terminations, Reductions and Savings report.

Among the gems of detestable discretion and irresponsible appropriations allocated by former administrations and congresses, proposed to be eliminated in FY2010, was the $180 million spent annually on wastewater infrastructure projects conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers, outside their purview.

"Since 1992, the Congress has authorized approximately 450 sewage and wastewater treatment projects and has directed hundreds of millions of dollars toward them," the report stated.

"The Corps does not assess the economic and environmental costs and benefits of these water and wastewater treatment projects and, therefore, has no basis to determine the value of these projects to the Nation. [...] Congressional funding for these projects through the Corps bypasses [the Environmental Protection Agency's and the Department of Agriculture's] processes for setting funding priorities."

The three main mission areas of the Corps of Engineers are commercial navigation, flood and storm damage reduction, and significant aquatic ecosystem restoration, all of which certainly do not include hundreds of millions of dollars of sewage management.