A recent audit report by the Office of Inspector General examined only a tiny portion of the waste, fraud, and abuse discovered in the EPA’s State Revolving Fund during the Biden administration. The review adds context to the agency’s earlier practice of throwing gold bars off the Titanic in the final days of the Biden presidency.

The audit’s revelations about improper and unidentified payments demonstrate how inadequate documentation, lax oversight, and mislabeling of transactions can quickly undermine a program’s integrity and erode public confidence.

The audit ought to be taken as a warning—not merely about a single program or administration, but about a longstanding pattern of financial misconduct that has persisted for decades under the guise of “environmental protection.” The State Revolving Fund’s findings are not anomalies; they reveal how billions of taxpayer dollars can be moved around, mislabeled, and effectively disappear from the record while agencies claim they are protecting the planet. When fundamental safeguards such as signed invoices, proper documentation, and truthful reporting are treated as optional, the public ends up financing a system that cannot even demonstrate its own integrity.

For years, Americans have been told that expanding environmental spending is both urgent and beyond question, even as oversight repeatedly uncovers sloppy management, weak internal controls, and “improper” or “unknown” payments that would never be tolerated in the private sector. This culture of lax stewardship—where missing paperwork and misreported millions are dismissed as mere technicalities—has allowed waste, fraud, and abuse to become ingrained in the workings of environmental agencies. Programs that should concentrate on clean water, genuine infrastructure, and measurable results instead become conduits for political goals, patronage, and hurried grant allocations.

Unfortunately, it is likely that many other initiatives aimed at improving and protecting the lives of Americans suffer from similar shortcomings.