October 30, 2006 2:18PM # Federal Robbers By [Chris Edwards](https://www.cato.org/people/chris-edwards) --- SHARE The Washington Post ran [a short piece](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102501999.html?nav=rss_nation) 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? ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).