"The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold reports on a tiny federal program that House Republicans and even the Obama administration would like to terminate but that is seemingly invincible. The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation, a grant program created in 1992, was supposed to pay for itself from the proceeds of coins honoring the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the new world.
After the coin money ran out, however, the foundation’s board of directors ran to Congress. In 2008, Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran came to the program’s rescue with a $600,000 appropriation. It has received an annual handout ever since:"...............
