Robert Dornan: “the Senior Environmental Employment [SEE] Program at the EPA is the most egregious example of what's wrong with how…”

“the Senior Environmental Employment [SEE] Program at the EPA is the most egregious example of what's wrong with how things work in Washington. The SEE Program is little more than a relic of the Tammany Hall era. Every year six and only six liberal special interest groups catering to senior citizens pay salaries to hundreds of their members to work at EPA facilities all over the country. The employee's salary, fringe benefits, travel expenses, registration fees, and medical monitoring are all covered by the liberal special interest group. The groups provide the jobs and their members are grateful. The only problem with this cozy scenario is that none of the money used by the special interest groups to pay their members is their own money. All the money used in the SEE Program comes from taxpayers. This means that lobbying groups such as AARP and the National Council of Senior Citizens [NCSC] receive millions of tax dollars each year to give patronage jobs to their members. And on top of it all, these groups get to keep up to 45 percent of these tax dollars for administrative and related costs. In 1994 alone, the AARP received nearly $25 million from taxpayers to hire their membership for positions at EPA facilities all around the Nation. Of this $25 million AARP kept $10 million for itself. NCSC kept $3 million out of $9 million for its operations. This is a patronage jobs program and nothing less.”