In his 11th annual Festivus Report, inspired by the Seinfeld holiday, Paul spotlights examples like $5.2 million for cocaine-dosed beagle dogs, $13.8 million for tick-infested puppies, and $54 million for Wuhan lab research using gain-of-function so we can have another pandemic.
We also funded alcoholic teenage ferrets, and Monkey Price is Right.
He blames unchecked pet projects for pushing the national debt toward $40 trillion, with the government borrowing $75,000 every second.
Paul promotes cuts via his ‘Six Penny Plan’ and ties it to oversight fights, as reactions praise the spotlight on excesses or dismiss it as showmanship.
Schools received a whopping nearly $200 billion in COVID relief funding, “which was wasted on things like rooms at Caesars Palace (a Las Vegas luxury hotel), renting out MLB stadiums, and ice cream trucks,” the report read.
The Federal Reserve also paid out $187 billion in Interest on Reserve Balances (IORB), the rate the Fed pays banks on the money held in Fed accounts.
Additional spending by the billions includes: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s $22.6 billion on expenses such as furniture, car repairs, home down payments and welfare for illegal immigrants in migrant programs; the Department of Transportation (DOT)’s $7.5 billion from Congress for electric vehicle charging stations during the Biden administration — though only 68 charging stations are running; $1.8 billion from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for “a shuttle that was six years behind schedule and stranded astronauts in space.”
Moving onto the millions, the Department of War, formerly the Department of Defense (DOD), spent an estimated $77 million on “an unnecessary dolphin training program that Congress won’t let end.”
“The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) gave EcoHealth Alliance $54 million to collect bat coronaviruses and transport them to Wuhan for gain-of-function experiments,” said the report.
