WHAT SHOULD WE CALL NONPROFITS THAT GET 99 PERCENT OF THEIR FUNDING FROM GOVERNMENT? Government “tools?” How about government “extensions?” At the Environmental Protection Agency, they’re called “cheap labor sources.” Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has been digging into a massive database of more than 100,000 EPA grants compiled by Open The Books.

He found six non-profits that got 99 percent of their funding from federal grants to provide jobs for seniors doing EPA work, including retired engineers willing to work for the maximum starting pay of $12.27 per hour. Average salary for a full-time EPA engineer in the civil service is nearly $89,000 or $44 per hour.

Under EPA’s Senior Environmental Employment program, the agency gets experienced seniors at bargain-basement salaries instead of the far more costly civil service pay and benefits. The SEE program has cost at least $321 million since 2009.

Barton has been digging into that EPA grants database for quite a while. For examples, see here, here and here. Don’t be surprised if Barton finds even more.