Tag Archives: Festivus Report

Rand Paul’s 2024 ‘Festivus Report’

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On December 23rd, Rand Paul released his 2024 ‘Festivus Report,’ his list of ridiculous things that the government spends American taxpayers’ money on. The Washington Examiner posted some of the highlights.

The first item listed:

Ice-skating drag queens for climate change

Paul revealed that the government provided funds for a drag queen ice-skating performance warning about the dangers of climate change. The National Endowment for the Arts gave the Bearded Ladies Cabaret in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, $10,000 for its  “Beard on Ice” performance to promote climate change alarmism. The artistic director for the self-described “queer cabaret arts organization” provided the following statement regarding the performance: 

“It’s so impossible, the issue of climate change and climate anxiety right now—almost as impossible as drag queens learning how to ice skate. So if we can get these drag queens to ice skate, maybe, just maybe, we can solve the climate crisis.”

Incidentally, the production was forced to cancel its opening-night performance due to poor ice conditions at the outdoor ice rink in which it was held, according to reports.

Followed by:

Millions of dollars on border security – for Paraguay

The “Festivus Report” also found that the State Department spent $2.1 million on border security—for Paraguay. This is particularly troubling because it meant that the U.S. government gave millions of dollars to another country for border security while ignoring the many failures and problems along the U.S. border. Millions of dollars in taxpayer money was sent to a South American country to help ensure people were not entering it illegally—while a record number of people were doing so in the U.S. 

Rats, cocaine, and loneliness

Cocaine is a terrible drug and the country has devoted a significant amount of resources in trying to prevent people from using the narcotic. Yet, apparently, more work was needed on the topic.

The Festivus Report identified a government study in which researchers injected rats with cocaine to analyze the impact of the drug’s addiction. The Department of Health and Human Services “spent $419,470 to determine if lonely rats” sought cocaine at a greater frequency than happy rats. These funds were used by researchers to observe and “see if rats placed in positive environments would be more likely to abstain from cocaine than rats in negative and isolating environments.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the results were predictable and as what one might suspect.

Using pandemic relief funds to buy an island

The report identified the misdeeds of a Florida businessman who reportedly used COVID-19 relief funds to purchase Sweetheart Island off the coast of Florida. An investigation into the purchase found that the swindler used funds obtained from pandemic assistance to “help finance the island purchase,” according to reports. 

The person who tried to buy the island fraudulently received $7.8 million in emergency pandemic aid by submitting over 30 deceitful applications. He was eventually busted, convicted for his crimes, and sentenced to over five and a half years in federal prison, and agreed to return the $7.8 million in aid he received.  

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the list.

I agree with Warren Buffett’s solution to balancing the budget. He has suggested that he could end the deficit by passing “a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. I could vote for that!

The Festivus Report

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On Friday, Fox News posted an article about Rand Paul’s annual Festivus Report.

The article reports:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released his annual Christmas “Festivus” report Friday for the ninth year in a row, outlining $900 billion in government waste. 

Among notable instances, the National Institutes of Health allocated funds to study Russian cats on treadmills, photos of Barbies were utilized as identification to obtain COVID relief funds, the Department of Defense lost $169 million of outdoor-stored military gear, $6 million went towards tourism in Egypt by the United States Agency for International Development, and the Small Business Administration provided over $200 million to “struggling” music artists such as Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne.

Up from $30 trillion in debt in 2022, this year’s debt amounts to $34 trillion, the report also highlights. 

“Who’s to blame for our crushing level of debt? Everybody,” Paul wrote in the report. “This year, members of both parties in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, which empowered the government to borrow an unlimited amount of money until 2024. As Congress spends to reward its favored industries and pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay the price through record–high inflation and crippling interest rates.”

He added: “The same big spenders teamed up, yet again, to continue sending Americans’ hard-earned money to foreign countries and funding endless wars, all while ignoring our porous southern border.”

The article concludes:

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a staggering increase in national debt, estimating an average addition of $2 trillion annually for the coming decade. This translates to over $5 billion in debt daily over the next 10 years. 

“As always, taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but, as I’ve done in years past, I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season,” Paul wrote. 

Last year, Paul’s report broke down $482 billion in wasteful spending, from the billions spent giving COVID relief funds to ineligible people to a $118,000 study on whether Marvel movie villain Thanos would really be able to snap his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.

Until the uni-party is unelected in Washington and in many of our states, we can expect more of the same.

 

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Every year Senator Rand Paul releases his annual “Festivus Report” detailing waste in government spending. On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article about the 2021 list.

The article reports:

For instance, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent $11.3 million, in part, in an effort aimed at getting Vietnamese citizens to stop burning their trash.  (It might just as well have burned the $11.3 million.)  The federal government spent $25 million to help New York City display art projects around its boroughs.  (Yes, defund the police, but make sure criminals are inspired by art.)

The federal government also reportedly donated $14 million to the Wilson Center, a Washington think-tank known for putting on parties for members of Congress.  Well, Congress controls the purse strings, and what better way to use taxpayers’ money than to throw itself lavish soirées?

One point three million dollars went to a study, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), to determine how hearing good or bad news affects peoples’ happiness.  (Guess what!  People are happier upon hearing good news than upon receiving bad news!  I would have told them that for 1.3 million pennies.)

The article also mentions spending for border walls (only not in America):

Incredibly, though the Biden administration halted construction of the wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, Paul said the federal government saw fit to give the Department of Defense $250 million to build border walls in the Middle East and North Africa. And why do walls work in places like Hungary, China, Israel, and North Africa…but not here in the States? Why do they work when surrounding the homes of progressive politicians like Barack Obama, but not when utilized to protect their own country’s borders? And why is the Department of Defense helping to defend foreign nations but not its own?

The article concludes:

The U.S. federal government, via its National Institute of Health (NIH), also gave more than $465,000 to Portland, Oregon’s Reed College to fund a study on gambling that taught pigeons to play slot machines.

Sen. Paul released a statement to the Daily Wire in which he noted, “It seems like just yesterday the national debt was $20 trillion, but now the U.S. has managed to breeze past $28 trillion, spending and wasting more than we ever have.”

But remember, Sen. Paul, that people are happier after hearing good news.  So let’s focus on the fact that we now have pigeons capable of playing slot machines.

It’s time to take away the government’s checkbook until they can learn to use it responsibly!

Festivus Report’ of government excess

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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.