Via Ars Technica, the Government Accountability Office recently issued a report entitled “Telecommunications: FCC Needs to Improve Performance Management and Strengthen Oversight of the High-Cost Program.” That’s a nice way of saying, “Things are going to hell in a handbasket!”

The FCC administers a small collection of subsidy programs for telecommunications that support rural telephone service, for example. This is the “high-cost” program referred to in GAO’s obscure title.

A thing called the Universal Service Administrative Corporation collects taxes from some phone bills and doles it out to telecom providers in the name of keeping phone rates affordalbe for everyone.

The GAO says, in its characteristic obscure way, “The high-cost program’s structure has contributed to inconsistent distribution of support and availability of services across rural America.” That means things are a mess.

With more than $30 billion having been spent since the program began a little over 10 years ago – yes, that’s billion with a “B” – GAO finds that the “FCC has not established long-term or intermediate performance goals and measures.” Again, a translation: they don’t know whether all the spending is doing any good.

Here are a few of the many bills meant to affect the FCC’s universal service programs, either growing them or shrinking them. Unfortunately, like our phone subsidies, this list is in no particular order. It’s in disarray too!

• H.R. 2054, The Universal Service Reform Act of 2007 (and a Senate version too)
• H.R. 6356, The Universal Service Reform, Accountability, and Efficiency Act of 2008
• S. 101, The USA Act
• H.R. 278, To amend section 254 of the Communications Act of 1934 to provide that funds received as universal service contributions and the universal service support programs established pursuant to that section are not subject to certain provisions of title 31, United States Code, commonly known as the Antideficiency Act (and a Senate version too)