Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) releases an annual report on government waste, and last year’s was plenty infuriating with its $482 billion. This year’s involves a jaw-dropping $900 billion going to things like studying Russian cats on a treadmill and our government promoting tourism in Egypt among other ludicrous examples of utter waste.
Paul’s government site announcement includes both a link to the full pdf report (here) and the following:
Some of the highlights include the National Institutes of Health spending a portion of a $2.7 million grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill and Barbies used as proof of ID for receiving COVID Paycheck Protection Program funds. The Department of Defense ruined over $169 million worth of military equipment by leaving it outside, the United States Agency for International Development spent $6 million to promote tourism in Egypt, and the Small Business Administration gave ‘struggling’ music artists like Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne over $200 million.
The Russian cat study was part of a $2.4 million NIH grant sent to a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology who gave a subgrant to researchers in St. Petersburg, Russia to study forward and backwards stepping by cats, according to Sen. Paul’s report. (RELATED: Rand Paul Performed Heimlich On Iowa Senator Joni Ernst)Another notable NIH grant in the report is $33.2 million for a program to support a monkey colony where 3,000 monkeys are taken care of before being shipped to research facilities across the country.. . . . The “festivus” report also shines light on a series of “disinformation” novels created by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the DHS component responsible for working with third-party groups to pressure social media platforms into censoring speech online.CISA developed a series of graphic novels, the “Resilience Series,” beginning with a novel called “Real Fake,” a book about a foreign intelligence operation to spread “disinformation” concerning a senator in order to influence an election.Another major source of government waste identified in the “festivus” report is a $400 million political campaign war chest held by the IRS that no major political candidate has used. The account is funded by a $3 option on personal tax returns designated for presidential campaign funding.
Your tax dollars at work.
Happy Festivus.
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