Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Friday continued the annual tradition of celebrating “Festivus,” airing out his many grievances as it relates to government waste.
Paul’s 2022 Festivus report highlights $482,276,543,907 in government wasteand includes $2.3 million used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an experiment involvinginjecting puppies with cocaine, $202,000 used by the Department of Defense (DOD) on Starbucks espresso machines, and $3 million for the construction of a Gandhi museum.
“This will be the 10th year in a row that I’ve celebrated #Festivus with you. By celebrated I mean have a little fun at the expense of Washington. If we don’t laugh we might cry,” Paul wrote before sharing some of the highlights of the report to his social media page and invoking the infamous Seinfeldquote from Frank Costanza, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!”
The NIH also wasted a significant amount of money. That includes $2.1 million on encouraging Ethiopians to wear shoes, $2.3 million injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, $1.1 million on “training mice to binge drink alcohol,” over $519,000 using mice to study racial aggression, and $187,500 on “verifying that kids love their pets.”
According to the report, the pet grant went to Kent State University, which used the funds to apparently “verify that the relationship between pets and children is beneficial to mental health.”
Other highlights directly from the report include:
Maintaining 77,000 empty Federal buildings (GSA)………………..………….$1,700,000,000
Helping illegal immigrants avoid deportation (DHS)……………………….…. $168,000,000
Overpaying government contractors for a terminated contract (GSA)…………..$69,000,000
Using COVID relief funds to construct an 11,000 square foot spa……….……. $140,000,000
Watching hamsters fight on steroids (NIH)………………………..………….…..$3,000,000
Studying the romance between parrots (NSF)……………..………………………….…$689,222
A radio campaign telling drivers to stop at railroad crossings (DOT)………………..$200,000
The war on cannabis is among the many dumb things congress does, but it's by no means the dumbest. Every year hundreds of billions of your dollars are wasted. Let's look at a few more of the worst examples of that.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/12/26/rand-pauls-annual-festivus-report-482276543907-government-waste/
Link to 24 page report
https://www.paul.senate.gov/sites/default/files/page-attachments/Festivus 2023 Clean AJS edits 5p.pdf