Senator Rand Paul’s eighth annual Festivus Report of 2022 reveals absurd amounts of government overspending and the irresponsible ways in which taxpayer funds went to waste. From misdirected COVID-19 relief funds to pointless and asinine studies, the federal government has shocked the world with its ability to find new ways to outspend years prior and exponentially grow our national debt.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $482,276,543,907 of waste, including a steroid-induced hamster fight club, a study to see if kids love their pets, and a study of the romantic patterns of parrots.”
Festivus Report
The report’s title is a prompted by the television sitcom “Seinfeld,’ which features an “airing of grievances” dubbed “Festivus Holiday.” In this annual report on the governments more reckless expenditures, Senator Paul explains, “the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey.”
Seven of the 31 highlighted “wastes” were the result of the National Institute of Health (NIH) under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who emerged as the mainstream media’s hero during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak offered Dr. Fauci a unique opportunity to remain relevant after numerous failed policies, and calls for his resignation back in the 1990s.
The Festivus Report found that since 1996 the NIH has “has annually awarded Northeastern University over $3 million dollars to watch steroid-injected hamsters fight to study whether current drugs for aggressive youth suppress steroid-induced aggression.” Senator Paul logically questioned the study by stating, “Instead of treating steroid-induced aggression with even more drugs, don’t you think it would be more beneficial for them to stop abusing steroids altogether?”
Senator Paul, a medical practitioner himself, has famously had a number of “stand-offs” with the NIH Director during Congressional Hearings on the national response to COVID-19. Pandemic relief funds were among the most common for abuse, and a total of $4,671,501,600 trillion were found to be misused by local municipalities or groups of individuals. Most of these funds were not recovered by the federal government once it was revealed that the abuse had occurred. Financial accountability is rare in Washington D.C. — the Pentagon offers a prime example of this, given that the institution hasn’t passed a single Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit.
Worse still, the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse gave SRI International $2.3 million in funding to inject beagle puppies with cocaine, among other various drugs, to study the effects. Senator Paul notes that SRI International sent the puppies to “Charles River Laboratories,105 the same laboratory that received $13.5 million to inject monkeys with Ebola, Tuberculosis and other deadly viruses . . . What’s up with your government’s obsession with getting animals high?”
Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Health also allocated $2.1 million over the course of five years “encouraging” Ethiopians to wear shoes, and studying the reasons they may choose not to. In 2017, the NIH granted the University of Concepcion in Chile $1,101,157 to inject mice with alcohol and study their behavior. These studies are just the tip of the iceberg in federal spending, and are being funded solely by taxpayer dollars, but have no practical application and will not improve the every day lives of American citizens.
The NIH ins’t the only wasteful spender, a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) report found that the Department of Defense (DOD) spent $28 million on military uniforms with a “forest-pattern” camouflage — which did not at all fit the needs of soldiers in the Afghan desert. Additionally, the DOD spent nearly $200,000 on “top of the line” Starbucks espresso machines for D.C. office employees.
The federal government’s total disregard for fiscal responsibility with the funds entrusted to them by the taxpayers continues to amaze even the most pessimistic skeptics, and the list of wasteful spending drags on for pages in the full report.
By the end of fiscal year 2022, the net interest payments on our national debt reached $475 billion, an inconceivable amount that continues to grow. The American government is acquiring more debt by the minute, and is not slowing down on spending any time soon.
