Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that Senator Rand Paul released his annual Festivus Report, airing his grievances of government excess and spending.
The article lists some of the details of the report:
“Spending was about 50% higher than last year, and payments of interest on the public debt remained extremely high at $387 billion. If you laid out that many $1 bills end to end, it’d be enough to wrap around the earth 1,506 times,” Paul wrote. “Our debt puts at risk the long-term solvency of major programs such as Social Security. And why? To pay for test tubes for COVID tests that turn out to be soda bottles?”
Paul’s report documented more than $54.7 billion worth of “totally wasted money.” He points to specific projects and studies that received federal funding and identifies the total value of grants used to conduct the research.
That amount of money, Paul said, was enough to fund the entire Treasury Department for three years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development for six months, or buy every citizen a 40-inch television.
The “waste” spending varies from failed international missions, such as $8.6 billion spent in Afghanistan to boost counternarcotics efforts or $23.9 billion spent “trying unsuccessfully to replace the Bradley [Fighting Vehicle],” to oddities including $1.3 million researchers accessed to determine whether people would knowingly eat ground-up bugs or $2 million spent testing whether hot tubs lower stress.
The report identified $896,000 spent by the National Institutes of Health “to give cigarettes to adolescent kids to test their reactions to various levels of nicotine in the cigarettes.”
The article concludes:
“Congress has every tool it needs to fight and end government waste,” Paul’s report stated. “It’s just a matter of finding the willpower to use them. Rest assured, I will keep fighting for fiscal sanity and providing my colleagues in Congress with the opportunity to find their fiscal backbone!”
Americans already pay more money in taxes than the medieval serfs did to their manor lords. Unless the spending is brought under control, our children and grandchildren will be slaves to the government. Congress controls the spending. Until voters elect congressional representatives who are willing to cut spending, things will not change.