There is is a bit of a scandal brewing with the former Governor of Nebraska turned Agriculture Secretary under Bush turned U.S. Senate candidate from Nebraska. It seems while running the AG department, if you wanted to study the U.S. Congress, instead of taking a walk up the street in DC, you took a taxypayer-funded trip to Honolulu. If you wanted to study Louisiana crayfish, you went to the most obvious place: Australia (see the video above--these are not made up stories).

None other than Republican Senator Tom Coburn decried the wasteful spending under Johanns' USDA:

The American people expect USDA to spend its-almost $18 billion discretionary budget this year helping farmers and protecting the safety and health of the U.S. agricultural system. While USDA will meet some of those expectations, if history is any guide, it will also spend millions of dollars sending employees to conferences at resorts and casinos on taxpayers’ dime.

“For the Farmers or for Fun,” an oversight report released by Senator Tom Coburn, ranking member of the Federal Financial Management Subcommittee, examines questionable conference spending by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) — an agency which reported almost tripling its conference spending since 2000, to $19.4 million in fiscal year 2006. In 2006, USDA sent 20,959 employees to 6,719 conferences and training activities across the nation and around the world (a 191 percent increase since 2000).

These included USDA employee trips to:

• “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” conferences in Las Vegas (pg. 11);
• A “Congressional” seminar on the workings of the U.S. Congress, located 4,500 miles away at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa (pg. 11);
• A pollution conference at a Virgin Islands resort (pg. 13);
• A conference on crawdads at Australia’s Surfers Paradise Resort (pg. 14); and
• A conference on fungus in Cairns, Australia (pg. 12).

USDA employees went long distance for:

• Approximately 59 separate conferences for 270 employees in Disney’s hometown, Orlando, Florida, at a cost of $282,656 (pg. 9);
• Approximately 94 separate conferences in Las Vegas (many at resort casinos) at a cost of $254,755 for 213 USDA employees (pg. 9); and
• Approximately 28 separate conferences in Hawaii for 64 USDA employees for a total cost of $130,600 (pg. 9).

Johanns was already likely going to be in a tight race with Democratic nominee and netroots hero Scott Kleeb in this race. I think it just got a whole lot closer.