NUTRITION SPENDING LEAVES ACCOUNTANTS SCRATCHING HEADS

It is old news that the federal government wastes as much as it spends on programs that actually do some good. Almost any program Washington touches winds up costing billions of dollars more than the direct benefits to recipients of a particular program's largess. This is mainly due to the overhead government consumes in the process of delivering its services.

From time to time there are horror stories of just how far the federal government has gone off the deep end. One example is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's nutrition programs administered by the Food and Consumer Service. This is the agency that doles out food stamps, school lunches and other nutrition programs such as food for poor pregnant women.

A report of an audit conducted by the Office of Inspector General of the agency's books for the fiscal year that ended in September 1994 left the bookkeepers with sharp headaches. The accounting was so terrible, in fact, that there was no documentation for some $13.5 billion of the estimated $36.7 billion the agency spent on food stamps, school lunches and the other programs.

"Estimated" is as accurate as the inspector general's auditors could come, both for the Food and Consumer Service and the entire USDA. Although the inspectors said they don't have any reason to believe the funds were lost, misspent or stolen, they are at a loss to say where the money actually went.

The agency, meanwhile, blames everything on those darned computers. Fiscal 1994 was the year the agency starting using new computer software to do its accounting, and no one bothered to check to see if the computers were accurate.

In a government where trillions of dollars are at stake, losing track of $13 billion here and there is as commonplace as a campaign promise. While voters can decide about candidates who don't keep their promises, no one seems to be very upset about the USDA's accounting fiasco. Congressman Bill Emerson of Cape Girardeau is chairman of the House Agriculture Nutrition Subcommittee. He has asked for some documentation of the school lunch funding.

How much of federal government is run without sufficient documentation to permit accountants to piece together even the most marginal paper trail? The worst fears of most taxpayers is that too much of government is wasting money even when the expenses are properly documented. The Food and Consumer Service would make a good starting place for demanding some better explanations and some assurances that safeguards are being implemented.