Saying the United States government wastes money is like saying Anthony Fauci flip-flops on policies. Both are undeniable and the only question we need to ask is how we stop them from happening.
Senator Rand Paul released his annual report of government waste, unironically known as his “Festivus Report.” It details the many, many, MANY ways our government takes our tax dollars and flushes them down the toilet. Here’s the report. Here are some highlights:
NEW:
Senator @RandPaul releases his annual Festivus report focusing on wasteful government spending.
Full report here: https://t.co/BeIBhQW7Gl pic.twitter.com/uR7M9YnNmu— Stephanie Myers (@_StephanieMyers) December 23, 2021
“Festivus” is a fictional holiday created in episodes of “Seinfeld” to commemorate December 23 as a “Festivus for the Rest of Us.” Paul has turned it into a way to mock our government’s insane spending and unwillingness to police itself over ludicrous waste of money earned by United States citizens.
According to Newsmax:
For COVID, Paul detailed that $4.29 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program went to people who did not qualify, $36 billion in unemployment was “paid improperly, with a significant portion attributable to fraud,” and $4.5 million was spent on “grinding up ferrets to develop COVID and flu vaccines.”
Additionally, the report details that $465,339 was issued as a grant to study pigeons’ gambling habits with the hope to understand human gambling habits better, $11.3 million went to instructing “the people of Vietnam to stop burning their trash,” and $361,001 was issued as a grant to see if letting kids eat junk food makes them want to eat more.
“No matter how much money’s already been wasted, politicians keep demanding even more,” the report stated.
Headline USA noted some other revelations from the report:
“Due to the lack of data,” said the Festivus report, “there is no way of verifying how many millions of dollars were lost. The best estimate we have is $773 million,” based on contract awards.
The report pegs miscellaneous waste at $8.5 billion, including $250 million on border walls “in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman.”
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Other notable items include $4.5 million on breeding ferrets for animal testing and $11.3 million on the prevention of trash burning in Vietnam, which as Paul noted, really isn’t an air quality problem in Vietnam.
“But it turns out the bulk of the areas in Vietnam with unhealthy air quality are in the northern part of the country,” said the report, “where wind currents blow polluted air south from China, and east from Thailand.”
The price tag, by the way, for pigeons gambling on slot machines: $465,339
While the report is intended as an insult to the stupidity of our government, it’s really a testament to how little the American people pay attention to how their money is spent.