by Ireland Owens
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul released a report Monday showing more than $1 trillion in government waste from last year.
“Festival” 2024 report highlighted various instances of wasteful government spending by the federal government, including a Las Vegas pickle complicated and an ice cabaret act. This year marks Paul’s 10th annual report.
“This year, I have my eye on a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” Paul wrote in the report. “That’s over $1 trillion wasted by the government, including things like ice skating drag queens, a $12 million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians demand even more.”
The report shows that the Department of the Interior (DOI) spent $12 million on a pickleball complicated in Las Vegas. DOI also spent $720,479 on duck wetland conservation projects in Mexico.
“I have many problems with federal spending, and now it’s time to hear about all of them,” Paul wrote in the report.
The report shows that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has awarded Bearded Ladies Cabaret a $10,000 grant to support a skating cabaret performance focusing on climate change. The report found that the NEA also spent $365,000 promoting circuses in city parks.
The report found that the Department of State spent $500,000 to expand the U.S. Embassy in Ethiopia’s #USInvestsInEthiopians social media campaign to a larger nationwide public relations campaign. The report said the State Department also sent $253,653 to Bosnia to combat “disinformation,” spent $2.1 million on border security in Paraguay and $3 million on “Climate Girls” in Brazil.
The report found that the Department of Health and Human Services spent $419,470 to determine whether lonely rats seek cocaine more often than ecstatic rats.
The report found that the National Science Foundation spent $288,563 to provide bird-watching groups with unthreatening spaces, also called “affinity groups.”
President-elect Donald Trump announced on November 12 that he chose Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk to co-chair the novel Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), which aims to cutting out about wasteful government spending.
“As always, the path to fiscal responsibility is often a lonely journey, but I fought government waste like DOGE before DOGE was cool,” Paul wrote in the report. “I will continue to fight government waste this holiday season.”
That many Americans have struggled with steep costs among high inflation throughout President Joe Biden’s term, with inflation of approx peak was 9.1% in June 2022, while inflation has changed softened in some cases, prices have remained high since June 2022, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a measure of the prices of everyday goods, recorded a year-on-year boost of 2.7% in November, According to to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ December 11 report.
Some experts do assigned massive government spending under the Biden-Harris administration to tank inflation rates. As of Tuesday, the national debt was $36.16 trillion. According to to US Treasury fiscal data.
A spokesman for Rand Paul did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Ireland Owens is a reporter with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Rand Paul” by Rand Paul.
