Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has built a reputation as a budget hawk, and he just released a year-end report on public waste.
Paul described the report as a gift for “Festivus,” a festival parodying the lavish spending typical of Christmas. He has made the report eight years in a row.
“Some of the highlights include the National Institutes of Health spending $2.3 million injecting beagle puppies with cocaine, and separately spending $187,500 to verify that kids love their pets,” Paul’s office wrote in a press release.
“The Department of Health and Human Services spent $689,222 to study romance between parrots, the NIH funded a $3 million annual research project to watch hamsters on steroids fight, and the U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on Super Bowl Ads.”
The senator’s report included some baffling expenses.
For example, it lists $192,592 for “Starbucks espresso machines” at the Department of Defense. It also mentioned $118,971 for the National Science Foundation’s “Researching if Thanos could snap his fingers wearing the infinity gauntlet,” a reference to the Avengers movies.
The report also includes some more predictable wastes of money.
It lists $1.7 billion for “Maintaining 77,000 empty Federal buildings.”
Of course, it also mentioned the misuse of pandemic-aid programs. In the topline, Paul’s office detailed $4.5 billion for the Small Business Administration’s Giving ineligible citizens COVID Economic Injury Disaster Grants,” and the number only goes up from there.
Paul’s office also published the report online, as part of its mission “to alert the American people to how their federal government uses their hard-earned money.”
The sitcom Seinfeld contains the most famous depictions of Festivus. The episode shows the holiday’s invented traditions, like the “airing of grievances.”
Paul aired his own grievances in a video posted on Twitter.
Take a look —
🎄 I wrote and performed my own scary version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas 🎄 Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/IHI0uNyW0N
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 20, 2022