Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday – Funding Fat-Filled Butter

Topline: In 2011, the Department of Agriculture fattened up the federal budget and New Yorkers’ stomachs with a $66,000 grant for a local farm’s high-fat butter.

Tens of thousands of dollars – to sell butter?

The Madison County farm was already producing 2-pound butter containers, but needed cash to buy a machine that could make half-pound sticks. Most of the $66,000 simply paid for smaller packaging.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses. 

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.   

Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth nearly $7 billion, including funds for the USDA’s buttery grants — which would be worth $94,000 today.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Key facts: Kriemhild Dairy Farms’ cows are exclusively grass-fed, making their milk higher in fat and better suited for restaurant-quality cooking. Grass-fed cows’ butter is also cheaper than organic butter while offering many of the same health benefits.

Apparently, Kriemhild needed the federal government’s help to advertise that. The USDA’s Value Added Producer Grant program gave the farm $10,000 to help choose a name for the new business, hire advertising consultants, design a logo and more. 

A new meaning for the phrase “cash cow”

In its final report to the USDA, Kriemhild reported, “it is hard to know many of the outcomes and impacts” of the grant. The company noted it was “starting to make progress” in convincing a fast-food chain to buy “a very large amount of cheese.”

The next wave of funding came from the Rural Business Enterprise Grant program. Kriemhild got $56,000 to buy a new “butter packing machine” that could cram its butter into smaller packaging than the 2, 5 and 10-pound containers the company was already producing.

Summary: “Cash cow” is supposed to be a figure of speech, but leave it to the federal government to turn the idiom into reality.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.