Cost overruns are no big thing in Washington

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell should be thanking Sen. Joni Ernst: The cost overruns her team dug up on mismanaged government projects make the Fed’s renovation overspending look almost modest.

On Wednesday, Ernst’s office released a report detailing nearly $163 billion in overruns on more than a dozen infrastructure projects, urging Congress to claw back $13 billion in allocated funds.

The biggest money-sucker is California’s high-speed rail boondoggle, which was supposed to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020 on a $33 billion budget when it first passed back in 2008.

The end is far out of sight after years of delays thanks to absurdly optimistic planning, bad decisions and red tape: The very first track was only laid this past January; the latest projections have it costing $128 billion with completion more than a decade late.

In the highly unlikely event it gets finished at all.

The Trump administration rightly nixed $4 billion set aside for Cali’s “train to nowhere”; not another red cent of taxpayer dough should be flushed down that black hole.

Another major cash waste is the Department of Veterans Affairs’ effort to transition to an electronic health record system, now running a cool $33.7 billion over budget.

And Ernst lists plenty of smaller financial fiascos that prove overruns are the norm when it comes to government work.

That includes an attempt to resurrect the LIRR’s Rockaway Beach line, the tab for which has ballooned to $1.4 billion — more than three times the $400 million it was supposed to cost.

Meanwhile, the Camden Direct Connection Project in New Jersey, meant to reduce traffic and improve highway conditions, has ballooned from an $873 million job finishing in 2021, to (so far) $1.2 billion in work that won’t finish ’til 2032.

Fact is, most of these projects were boondoggles from the start — half-baked ideas that never should’ve gotten started.

No wonder the Fed’s Powell shrugged off the extra $600 million for a $2.5 billion headquarters revamp when testifying to the Senate Banking Committee.

Good on Ernst for drawing attention to this dysfunction: The first step is admitting you have a problem.

But nothing will change unless Congress stops allocating federal funds for pipe-dream projects that suck up public cash for years with nothing to show for it.