The Washington Post had a story yesterday on the fact that a large percentage of the USDA Rural Development funds have been sent instead to America’s metropolitan areas. As the Post points out, “more than three times as much money went to metropolitan areas with populations of 50,000 or more ($30.3 billion) as to poor or shrinking rural counties ($8.6 billion).”

Some of the “highlights” from the report include $1 billion in low interest loans to serve the rapidly growing suburbs of Tampa, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia and $23 million in Rural Development funds to a Texas-based Internet provider to wire some of of the most affluent subdivisions in the Houston suburbs, “including one that boasts million-dollar houses and an equestrian center.”

This is a long ways from the mission of the USDA Rural Development program, which is “to help rural Americans to improve the quality of their lives.” Providing a billion dollars to help fuel suburban growth and another $23 million to provide Internet access to a community of millionaires has very little indeed to do with improving the lives of most rural Americans.

We know by looking around our communities that there are areas that could use some real help. Places that were by-passed during the strong economic growth of the Clinton years, and have fallen further behind since. Places that have the pull of home but are increasingly losing population (and with that their local tax base and the pupils that drive school funding). It is unconscionable to spend Rural Development dollars in the areas that need it least when so much of rural America continues to struggle.