The US authorities wasted greater than $1 trillion on kooky frivolous initiatives this previous yr — together with through the use of taxpayer cash to show rats into coke fiends, in keeping with Sen. Rand Paul’s annual “Festivus Report.’’
The Kentucky Republican’s anti-waste probe — named in honor of the day earlier than Christmas Eve vacation immortalized by TV’s basic “Seinfeld’’ — revealed the truly bizarre “pet projects’’ approved by “members of both political parties” in 2024.
Probably the most mindboggling spending line gadgets concerned the Biden-Harris administration’s Division of Well being and Human Providers, which spent $419,470 on a research to “determine if lonely rats seek cocaine more than happy rats.”
Paul’s report doesn’t observe if scientists have been in a position to decide which rats went for the blow.
Maybe extra disturbing is the greater than $2 million in authorities grants given to Cornell College over the previous two years to contaminate cats with COVID-19 — after which kill them when experiments on whether or not the felines can transmit the illness are carried out.
“Since January 2022, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s NIAID and the USDA have given Cornell University $2.24 million to study whether felines can contract and transmit COVID-19 … Not only is this a waste of over a million in taxpayer dollars, but the experiments have led to the suffering and death of over thirty cats,” the report states.
One other questionable use of taxpayer cash got here from the Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, which awarded a $10,000 grant to ice-skating drag queens.
The Bearded Women Cabaret – a self-described “queer cabaret arts organization” – received the dough in help of its local weather change-themed ice-skating performances.
The so-called “Beards on Ice” present options “polar bears, drag queens, and a character dubbed ‘Nonbinary Parental Guardian Nature’” and hopes to deliver local weather consciousness to anybody attending the efficiency, in keeping with the report.
The State Division additionally tossed a cool $3 million for “Girl-Centered Climate Action” in Brazil, the report stated.
Below a piece titled “Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime,” Rand raged that the “federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings.”
He additionally famous that the DHHS doled out a $5 million grant to check children Fb advertisements about meals.
The NEA was additionally pilloried by Paul for spending $385,000 in federal {dollars} since 2015 on artwork shows for New York’s Excessive Line park, together with $40,000 on a 16-foot-tall pigeon sculpture that may quickly grace the favored Manhattan strolling location.
The identical company has spent $365,000 over the previous a number of years to advertise sideshows in varied metropolis parks nationwide, too, most just lately awarding a $30,000 grant in 2024 for “free” circus artwork performances.
One of many largest expenditures showcased in Paul’s Festivus waste report was a $12 million funding of taxpayer cash on a pickleball complicated in Las Vegas.
The sprawling 5.4-acre, 30-court complicated in Sin Metropolis was funded partially with cash spent by the Division of the Inside and in opposition to the needs of close by householders, who “petitioned the city to vote against the agreement and consider moving the complex elsewhere citing concerns about noise nuisance, increased traffic and parking congestion, and an overall decrease in their quality of life and home value,” the report stated.
Paul vowed to “work with Congress and the incoming Trump administration to cut this waste” within the coming yr.
“As always, taking the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but I’ve been fighting government waste like DOGE before DOGE was cool,” he added, referring to President-elect Donald Trump’s new initiative to shrink the scale of presidency.
“And I will continue my fight against government waste this holiday season.”
