When Republicans voted for the farm bill two weeks ago, they not only voted to continue the unjustifiable payment of subsidies to private interests, they also voted to continue supporting many agencies within the Department of Agriculture that over the last four years have paid millions of dollars to dead people. The Government Accountability Office issued a report last week with the somewhat funny title “Farm Programs: The USDA needs to do more to prevent improper payments to deceased individuals.” The New York Times reports:

The Natural Resources Conservation Service, which oversees the Agriculture Department’s conservation programs, sent out $10.6 million in payments between 2008 and 2012 to more than 1,000 people who had been dead for more than a year, according to the report.

The Risk Management Agency, which administers the crop insurance program, paid $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who had been dead for at least two years. The G.A.O. said that some of those payments might have been made while the farmer was still alive, but that there was no way to know for sure.

Sadly, I am not surprised, and I don’t expect it to end. There will be a lot hand-waving and talking about better oversight, but in the end things will continue their merry way and money will continue to flow to agencies that are terrible stewards of our tax dollars.

Think about how many GAO reports come out every year identifying some sort of waste, fraud, and abuse. Think about the number of reports put out by Senator Coburn’s office each year about the many programs and spending items that clearly should be terminated. Think about the number of hearings where witnesses, government watchdogs, and IGs identify overpayments, duplicative programs, and more.

I have participated myself in many such hearings (here, for instance), and I can tell you that nothing ever comes out of them. One reason is that such reform-minded reports don’t bind appropriators, so they ignore them. There is a long track record of congressmen appropriating funds for a program whether we need it or not, whether the money goes to dead farmers or not, whether the program benefits one firm at the expense of the others, whether it benefits an industry at the expense of its consumers, or whether there are 54 other programs doing the exact same thing. Lawmakers in Congress have been captured by private interests and will continue to support programs even in the face of clear evidence that they shouldn’t (the latest Republican vote on the farm bill is a good example of that.)

At the end of the day, I have very little faith in the ability of lawmakers to police themselves. In fact, in most cases the best way to avoid wasting taxpayers’ money isn’t to improve oversight, but instead to shrink the size of government and eliminate whole programs. Many of them shouldn’t exist at the federal level anyway and should fall under the purview of the state and local governments or the private sector. While there will still be waste, fraud, and abuse in a smaller goverment (especially if the decision-making process and the incentives for politicians to be captured by special interests remain the same), it is easier to effectively oversee fewer programs. That’s the case I made here several years ago.

Until then, our money will continue to go to specal interests — dead or alive.