Exposing Wasteful Spending of the U.S. Government: The Festivus Report
“I got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!” That statement announces the traditional opening of the “airing of grievances” part of the Festivus season. In the U.S. Congress, Senator Rand Paul has adopted the spirit of the Festivus holiday as an opportunity to highlight wasteful government spending.
Paul does that by releasing his annual Festivus report. The 2023 edition represents his ninth airing of grievances about government waste and how the government has managed to waste money in recent years.
The new edition doesn’t disappoint! Here are my three favorite line items of waste funded by the federal government from the 2023 Festivus Report:
- Barbie Doll Photo Used to Get COVID PPP Funds
- DOD’s $8,395 Lobster Tank Not Quite the Tank to Take into Battle!
- NIH’s Monkey Casino: Gambling for Drinking Water
The 2023 Festivus Report also features a flashback to Senator Tom Coburn’s 2017 WasteBook, which exposed the U.S. government’s funding of other studies of monkey gambling.
The question of whether it is the monkeys or the bureaucrats that fund the monkeys’ gambling who have a bigger problem has not yet been answered by scientists.
