From the DWT You Can't Make This Stuff Up Bureau: The State Department calls in Foreign Service volunteers to help with the passport crisis

In the tradition of former FEMA Director Michael "Heckuva Job, Brownie" Brown, those wily small-government (but whopping-big-deficit) Republicans are continuing their campaign to prove that government can't do anything right. The more logical conclusion would be that they can't do anything right, but do we have time to quibble when the Bush State Department is sitting on a summer-travel-ruining backlog of three months for issuing passports.

As often when we enter the realm of You Can't Make This Stuff Up, our tour guide is the Washington Post's Al Kamen, who leads off today's "In the Loop" column with the startling revelation that the beleaguered State Department is calling for volunteers to help with the passport crisis.

No, not you-or-me-type volunteers. They're reaching out to consular officers stationed around the world who have leave time coming and expect to find themselves in or near a city that has a passport office. They'll even get paid a few bucks.

In Washington? On Home Leave?
A Passport Office Needs You.

By Al Kamen

Maura Harty [above], the State Department's designated flak-catcher for the public furor over three-month-plus passport issuance delays -- which are ruining many, many thousands of family vacations and educational and business trips -- is working overtime to reduce the backlog.

Seems the department, where Harty is assistant secretary for consular affairs, grossly underestimated the effect of a new rule requiring passports for people coming back by air from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Harty, grilled yesterday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is working to move money around to hire hundreds of workers to handle the avalanche of applications. But that won't be enough, she said in a recent cable to consular officers around the world.

"Our domestic passport agencies are all working flat out," she wrote. "We need your help."

So if you might be passing through Washington this summer while going to a new assignment, she wrote, or maybe going through "another city where we have a domestic passport agency, please consider spending a few days helping out."

There's a task force here "specifically for [Foreign Service] consular volunteers and we would welcome your participation."

"If you are taking home leave near" a passport office "and would be interested in adding a few days of passport work there to your summer . . . plans, we would be happy to arrange that as well." They'll even pay you a per diem -- but not travel costs.

So sign up "if you are interested in helping your colleagues," Harty said, "and in gaining new insight into the important world of domestic passport processing." Nothing like insight. And you can watch as some of the hundreds of thousands of rabid passport seekers try to jump the counter to rip your lungs out.

After that, you can work for the D.C. DMV.