Saturday, December 21, 2019

SEN. RAND PAUL’S 2019 FESTIVUS LIST OF WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT SPENDING

A $500,000 'golden potty,' $22 million on Serbian cheese, $467,000 to study a frog's mating call and a $84,375 Bob Dylan statue

Daily Mail
December 20, 2019

In total, Paul has grievances with how $50,463,462,292.35 was spent this year.

And explained that number represents the taxes of about 6.1 million Americans, representing 137 percent of the population of Paul's state that he represents in the U.S. Senate - Kentucky.

The same amount of money, Paul wrote, could be used to pay for 100,000 miles of paved four-lane highways, which would wrap earth four times. It would also pay for seven months of medical care for all of the country's veterans.

In the report, Paul liked to highlight the ridiculous.

One such example is a National Institutes of Health five-year study that gets Zebrafish hooked to nicotine. That will cost taxpayers a cool $708,466.58, the report said.

The Kentucky Republican highlighted another NIH study where $4,658,865 was spent over several years to study the connection between drinking alcohol and winding up in the emergency room.

He also knocked the National Science Foundation spending $466,991.68 studying the mating call of the male túngara frog of Panama.

Paul scoffed at a State Department decision to spend $84,375 on a statue of Bob Dylan for the U.S. embassy in Mozambique. He also didn't care much for the State Department spending $100,000 to prop up the Pakistani film industry.

And the senator was not impressed that USAID spent $22 million - yes, million - on a project to bring Serbian cheese up to international standards. In the report, Paul pointed to the pre-existing 1.4 billion pound surplus of cheese in the U.S.

'So American dairy farmers dealing with the realities of this situation might be cheesed off to learn their government worked to strengthen competition and the European cheese market - using their own tax dollars to boot!' Paul complained.

He also complained that USAID has spent $20 million teaching the Lao language to Laotians.

Paul slapped the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which runs the Metro subway system in and around Washington, D.C.

He finds particularly aggrieving what WMATA's inspector general dubbed 'Operation Golden Potty.'

The IG found that from 2003 to 2017, Metro spent approximately $500,000 maintaining one self-cleaning toilet at the Huntington Metro station that was 'not user-friendly.' The bill to taxpayers may not even be accurate as Metro lost the receipts several years the restroom was running.

Metro had deemed already existing restrooms at the station a security threat post-9/11 and purchased the 'Golden Potty' after that.

But in recent years it sat broken - from 2017 to 2019 - and now, according to the report, it's disappeared.
__________

HERE IS A PARTIAL LIST
The federal government wasted Americans’ tax dollars as it...


Bought an elementary school gym scoreboard at a 491% markup (BIA) ..... $13,000

Sent international students to college for free (State) …... $15,825,000

Studied the habits of online dating app users (NIH and NSF) ….. $1,200,000

Taught Lao to Laotians (USAID) ….. $20,000,000

Improved the quality of TV in Moldova (State) ….. $2,000,000

Paid to teach social scientists how to apply for grants (NSF) ….. $103,777

Allowed the 1033 Program to be abused (DOD) ….. $2,711,255

“Tested” whether social justice improves STEM education (NSF) ….. $649,773

Funded a week of summer school for grad students (NSF) ….. $49,990

Developed 6 undergrad course units on food marketing (NIFA) ….. $128,054

Spent millions on the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) ….. $153,000,000

Funded debate and Model United Nations competitions in Afghanistan (State) ….. $300,000

Funded research that involves hooking Zebrafish on nicotine (NIH) ….. $708,466

Bought a statue from Bob Dylan for the embassy in Mozambique (State) ….. $84,375

Studied the connection between drinking alcohol and winding up in the ER (NIH) ….. $4,658,865

Improved the quality of Egyptian schooling (USAID) ….. $16,000,000

Bought textbooks for Afghan students (USAID) ….. $33,921,175

Brought Serbian cheese up to international standards (USAID) ….. $22,000,000

Studied the mating call of the male Túngara frog of Panama (NSF) ….. $466,992

EDITOR’S NOTE: The $500,000 spent maintaining the non-working Golden Potty does not include its original cost. No telling how much the damn thing cost to begin with.

But worse than the Golden Potty expenditure, the money spent teaching Laotians to speak Lao and for the Bob Dylan statue in Mozambique, is the money American taxpayers are spending to pay for the college tuition of students from foreign countries when most American students cannot afford college without going deep into debt.

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