Tag Archives: wasteful government spending

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!

One Of Many Reasons Government Spending Keeps Increasing

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On September 24, The Daily Signal posted an article about some recent comments made by Senator Joni Ernst. The Senator highlighted the practice of ‘Christmas in September’ spending by government agencies. There are some problems with the way our federal government’s budgeting system works. There is something called ‘baseline budgeting.’ This simply means that your starting point for your yearly budget is how much you actually spent of last year’s budget. Therefore, unless you want your budget to be cut this year, you had better spend all of the money you had in your budget last year. This means that as the fiscal year draws to a close, government agencies have the incentive to spend wildly. It also results in statements that actually make no sense but are widely accepted as fact. For instance, if I ask for a ten percent increase in my budget and only get a five percent increase, I will complain that my budget was cut five percent. In any other world, I got a five percent increase. In the world of government, I got a five percent cut. That is the reason that even though you are reading that the federal budget got cut, the spending actually increased. Unfortunately, to Washington it is all a game. Wild spending of taxpayer money is not a problem to our Congress–only to the taxpayers who have to pay the bill.

The article at The Daily Signal reports:

The fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate called on colleagues Tuesday to pass her legislation to reduce wasteful government spending and rein in agencies’ spending practices.

“Government agencies are going on their annual ‘Christmas in September’ use-it-or-lose-it shopping spree,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor.

“If not spent by midnight on Sept. 30, leftover dollars expire and can no longer be used,” Ernst said. “Rather than returning the money to taxpayers, binge-buying bureaucrats are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars needlessly.”

The federal government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Ernst’s legislation, called the End of Year Fiscal Responsibility Act, would end agencies’ annual 11th-hour sprints to spend all their budgeted money before the fiscal year runs out.

Her bill would curb how much an agency could spend in the last two months of the fiscal year to no more than what the agency usually spends each month on average during the rest of the year.

…“This bill won’t end all wasteful spending, but it will force agencies to put more thought into long-term planning and curtail the bad habit of out-of-control impulsive spending,” Ernst said.

Ernst said “spending sprees” in the past have included almost $12,000 for a commercial foosball table; $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab; $2.1 million for games, toys, and wheeled goods; over $53,000 on table china; and over $40,000 on clocks.

“With our national debt now surpassing $22 trillion, Washington should be looking for ways to save by canceling or delaying unnecessary expenses, rather than splurging on end-of-year wish lists,” Ernst said.

Another piece of legislation pushed by Iowa’s junior senator would keep her colleagues from returning home until they passed a budget.

“Through my No Budget, No Recess Act, members of Congress would be prohibited from leaving Washington if we fail to pass a budget by April 15 or approve regular spending bills by Aug. 1,” she said.

The government must stop enabling agencies to spend money that shouldn’t be spent, Ernst added:

I think Senator Ernst has some really good ideas.

Why We Need More Tea Party Members In Congress

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Official portrait of United States Senator (R-OK).

Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Tom Coburn released his report on wasteful government spending today. The report is entitled “Wastebook 2011.”

Here are some of the highlights:

• $75,000 to promote awareness about the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees & poinsettias.

 • $15.3 million for one of the infamous Bridges to Nowhere in Alaska.

 • $113,227 for video game preservation center in New York.

 • $550,000 for a documentary about how rock music contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 • $48,700 for 2nd annual Hawaii Chocolate Festival, to promote Hawaii’s chocolate industry.

 • $350,000 to support an International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy.

 • $10 million for a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistan.

 • $35 million allocated for political party conventions in 2012.

 • $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital.

 • $764,825 to study how college students use mobile devices for social networking.

We need to elect people to Congress who will stop the wasteful spending. The problem is on both sides of the aisle. There is a Washington political establishment that believes spending is power and will continue to wildly spend until they are voted out of office. All Americans need to pay attention during the next year to see who the spenders are and who is trying to shrink the government and its spending. Then we need to vote accordingly.

 

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