The long security lines at some of the nation’s major airports in recent weeks have been nuts. Over and over, we have seen that it was a big mistake for the Bush administration and Congress to nationalize airport screening back in 2001.

Politics and bureaucratic mismanagement drive up costs and generate failure in the federal government. More evidence comes from a Washington Post report today on a botched computer project at the Department of Homeland Security

The Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a report finding waste in the department’s vast warehousing of equipment and supplies. Here are a few examples of the problems found by the IG:

Ten years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast and generated a huge disaster. The storm flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and caused $100 billion in property damage. The storm’s damage was greatly exacerbated by the failures of Congress, the Bush administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Today is Tax Day. Federal tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service with a postmark before midnight. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the federal government will collect $3.2 trillion in revenue this year.

Policymakers are battling over a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The disagreement over the bill involves the funding of President Obama’s recent immigration actions.

Reading some Frederic Bastiat last night, I circled his observation that the government takes advantage of citizen passivity to increase its power, often by promising to “cure all the ills of mankind.” The government initiates “in the guise of actual services, what are nothing but restrictions; thereafter the nation pays, not for being served, but for being disserved.”

Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002 by combining 22 agencies that are responsible for a vast array of activities. President George W. Bush promised that the new department would “improve efficiency without growing government” and would cut out “duplicative and redundant activities that drain critical homeland security resources.”

The Secret Service is scandal prone. It spends excessively on foreign presidential trips, and it has agents who get in trouble with prostitutes and 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the second largest agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The agency cost taxpayers $13 billion in fiscal year 2014, and its budget is growing quickly. Spending has increased 85 percent in the last ten years, after accounting for inflation.