Waste, Waste, and More Waste
Each year, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul releases his annual “Festivus Report”. In this report, Senator Paul highlights the billions of wasteful spending that the US Federal government engages in each fiscal year.
For those unfamiliar with the man, Senator Rand Paul is the current US Senator for Kentucky, the son of former Presidential candidate Ron Paul, and a former presidential candidate himself back in 2016.
A life-long Republican, Rand Paul considers himself to be a “constitutional conservative”–referring to his small-government, fiscally conservative sympathies. Paul’s concern for government spending isn’t unfounded. The US National Debt crossed the $30 Trillion mark in early 2022, and it isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
Currently, Senator Paul serves on the Senate Subcommittee of Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management. So, he often harps on wasteful government spending.
Senator Paul releases his “Festivus Report” both in jest and in seriousness. Sure, it’s funny to point out how much taxpayer money gets wasted each year. However, it’s also unnerving to see how fiscally irresponsible Americans have been in the post-Cold War era–both on governmental-level and on a societal-level.
In his latest report, Paul points out $52 billion of blatantly wasteful federal spending in the 2021 calendar year. The $52 billion is categorized into three categories in the report: COVID-19, Afghanistan, and Miscellaneous.
With that, the rest of this post will look at some of the five examples of wasted spending from the Federal Government.
A “Best of” Wasteful Spending
-Pigeon Gambling ($465,339): The National Institute for Health (NIH) gave an Oregon college $400k to do a study where Pigeons were taught how to gamble. Literal clown world level stuff.
-State Department Funding for African Green Energy ($179 million): the US State Department spent millions of dollars to provide Africans with electricity derived from green energy. To note, Senator Paul mentions that 60,000 Americans on Navajo reservations lacked access to electricity.
-Translating Books into Georgian ($182,741): The US Government paid this six-figure sum to translate books into Georgian for Georgian students (i.e. the nation of Georgia, not the US State)
-FDA’s Eel fattening Study ($337,500): the FDA paid a Candian company over $300k for a scientific study that attempted to fatten eels for human consumption. Sounds kind of strange, don’t you think?
-Social Security Overpayments ($4 Billion): the Social Security Administration overpaid Social Security recipients by over $4 Billion in 2021.
To close this post, I decided to include a link to the latest edition of Senator Paul’s Waste Report: Festivus Report 2021. This post was a little differnt from my usual content, so I hope you enjoyed it!
“Stay Classy, my Friends”
-Tin Can Conservative