WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), released his 2020 “Festivus” Report, totaling over $54 billion in government waste.
This marks Dr. Paul’s sixth edition of the Festivus Report as he continues working to alert the American people to how their federal government uses their hard-earned money.
This year, each story received a “Platinum Pig Award” that ranked the waste on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being the most wasteful).
Sections are broken down into Health Care; Foreign Aid; Environment, Energy, Science; Military; and Miscellaneous, and highlights include lizards on treadmills, losing over 100 drones in Afghanistan, and combating binge-watching.
Honestly, if you were to go through the typical federal budget produced over the last 20 to 25 years, with a serious eye towards identifying unnecessary and wasteful government spending, the real total would be more on the order of $400 billion to $500 billion dollars annually. Finding a mere $54 billion is wasteful spending is what could be identified by simply skimming through our federal government outlays over a weekend. Case in point: Our just announced new stimulus bill from Congress is almost 90 percent pork. Unnecessary and wasteful spending for items ranging from millions, yet again, for the Kennedy Center in D.C. (a Democrat fav) to hundreds of billions in foreign aid to countries for the most absurd non-Covid related related programs you can imagine. That all adds up to close to $300 billion just in that one bill.
Our current federal budget is rapidly approaching $5 trillion dollars on an annual basis. Last year it was $4.5 trillion, but thanks to the Covid-19 virus from China, multiple stimulus spending bills, loaded with pork that has had ZERO to do with the impact of Covid on our economy, wasteful federal spending has kicked into overdrive. So if anyone tries to tell you that wasteful spending by the federal government is limited to this paltry $54 billion dollar amount, I have a beautiful bridge to sell you Brooklyn.
Congressional spending bills are all posted on-line, as required by law. It would be beneficial for the American people to spend less time on useless nonsense like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube and more learning about where all the money we send to Washington really gets spent.
Thank you Senator Paul. Your waste report I’m sure is close to accurate but , unfortunately, this country does not care about govt
waste or the deficit spending that it causes. All govt agencies MUST..MUST spend more money every year. No govt program is ever
suspended. There is no such thing as a private sector cost/expense cut.
Government waste? … The Government NEVER wastes! … They ALWAYS spend more than they have to justify getting an increase in the next budget! … It’s only in Business that budgets are Not Exceeded so that the Business Manager can Keep his/her job and hopefully get a Raise! … Isn’t that really why so many people Want to work for the Government?