Senator Rand Paul has highlighted boondoggle outlays such as researching Russian cats and monkey gambling
From a Pentagon lobster tank to a transgender monkey study, the US government found a wide range of ways to waste taxpayer dollars in 2023, Senator Rand Paul has revealed in a report highlighting $900 billion of reckless spending.
Paul released his annual ‘Festivus’ report on Friday, saying Washington continued to fund “endless wars” and send money to foreign countries, even as the national debt ballooned this year from $30 trillion to nearly $34 trillion. “We borrow $200 million every hour, we borrow $3 million every minute, and we borrow $60,000 every second,” he said.
The report gave examples such as a $2.7 million grant that was used to study Russian cats that were forced to walk on a treadmill in a St. Petersburg lab after their brain stems were snipped.
More than $477,000 was spent on a transgender monkey study in which the male victims were feminized with injections of female hormones. Another study that Paul found wasteful, funded through a $1.7 billion agricultural research program, found that the fur color of dogs did not affect their rectal temperatures after being walked on a hot day.
An estimated $38 million in Covid-19 payments went to people who the government knew to be dead, Paul said. A grant program that was supposed to help the owners of entertainment venues stay in business reportedly paid out more than $200 million to famous music artists and their touring companies.
The payments included $8.9 million to rapper Lil Wayne, $10 million to Chris Brown, and $8.6 million to rock band Smashing Pumpkins.
Overseas outlays included $6 million to help boost tourism in Egypt