EPA STASHING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN OBSCURE SLUSH FUND-LIKE ACCOUNTS: What happens when federal bureaucrats take billions of dollars collected for one purpose and squirrel them away in hundreds of obscure accounts to spend on whatever they decide? Does this help explain why EPA so often acts like it answers to no one?

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton confirmed the existence of 1,308 “special accounts” and his next objective is to expose how they have been used during both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations. That won’t be easy, considering it’s been seven years since either GAO or the Inspector General at EPA reviewed the accounts.

“The ‘special accounts’ are financed by legal settlements between the agency and parties responsible for polluting Superfund sites. Funds are deposited and spent without prior congressional approval,” Barton reports. The accounts aren’t technically secret because EPA admits their existence, but the agency makes it all-but-impossible to learn anything about the accounts or how they are used.

Next question: Will Congress do anything about this? If not, the constitutional principles of separate-but-equal branches and separation of powers will be officially dead, to say nothing of congressional oversight. And Congress will have only itself to blame for the bad joke it becomes.