Did millions in taxpayer dollars help fund the unsuccessful efforts of some large environmental groups to unseat President Bush in the last election?  Well that’s the question recently asked by a U.S. Senate committee investigating whether government grants given out by the EPA were used for partisan politics last November.  According to the Capital Research Center, nearly one-quarter of all EPA grant money between 1997 and 2003 — totaling an astonishing one quarter of a billion dollars – was given to non-profit groups like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and the NRDC which all have educational as well as political arms.  So it’s little surprise many say drastic reform is needed to better monitor, or even eliminate, this kind of government funding.