Just how much waste, pork and silly spending are taxpayers subsidizing? Inflation is at a 40-year high and just crossed eight-percent on a rolling 12-month basis. Most economists agree inflation is the result of our federal government throwing trillions of dollars into pandemic relief, the federal budget, and “infrastructure.”
It’s too much money chasing too few goods — setting up the classic case for runaway inflation. Much of the government spending was borrowed against our future.
Our ever-rising national debt just surpassed $30 trillion this year — at least $91,613 for every person in the U.S. So, just how much federal waste, silliness, weird or unnecessary spending are your tax dollars funding?
Delving into the trillions of dollars in annual spending, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, recently examined Washington’s discretionary spending — beyond such big-ticket items as health, welfare and defense.
We found staggering examples and highlighted some of the worst in our new oversight report, Where’s The Pork?
State and Local Pandemic “Bailouts”
At the highest level, large, populous states received pandemic bailouts despite being on strong fiscal footing. California was sitting on a massive $75.7 billion budget surplus at the time President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, a trillion-plus-dollar law that many critics say spiked the rapid inflation now upending household budgets. Despite Governor Gavin Newsom publicly bragging about the surplus, the California state government reaped another $26 billion in federal tax dollars under the rescue plan.
Funds were allocated based on the state unemployment rate, meaning California cashed in, while states with better policies and lower unemployment lost out. West Virginia, for example, had its funds adjusted down by $900 million as tax dollars were directed elsewhere. Georgia lost out on $1.5 billion.
Gov. Newsom has so much money to play with, he cut $8.1 billion in state-level stimulus checks to his residents. In 2021, California cruised to a $100 billion budget surplus!
The congressional bailouts were equally as egregious at the local level. The 50 richest places in America, those best positioned to weather any storm, ended up with $100 million in COVID relief funding. Atherton, California, the richest town in America, took in $1.4 million.
Other Pandemic “Aid” Waste
The federal government isn’t just wasting taxpayer money, they are literally ripping us off.
Dead people were paid billions: 2.2 million deceased people received $3.6 billion in economic stimulus checks. The government asked for it back, but dead people are notoriously bad about paying up. The federal government is equally bad about clawing it back.
How did this happen? Well, the Internal Revenue Service didn’t check the Social Security Administration’s “deceased persons” list.
The Do Not Pay list got paid. The Small Business Administration doled out 57,000 Paycheck Protection Plan forgivable loans to entities on the Do Not Pay list housed at Treasury. Cost to taxpayers was $3.6 billion.
Ridiculous Federal Spending
We found that the federal government is literally gambling away hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars — on pigeons.
National Institutes of Health doled out a $463,330 grant to researchers at Reed College to “create a token-based economy where pigeons are taught to gamble with slot machines.” The pigeons were given tokens, and could choose whether to spend, save or gamble them. No explanation in how the gambling habits of pigeons translate to humans.
The National Science Foundation gave a $556,584 grant that in-part funded a study of beasts pooping — yes, The Hydrodynamics of Defecation. Animal bowel movements were measured, studied, and documented, including the release of four very gross videos.
Nearly $7 million was spent on technology to film your rear end — while you’re on the toilet. National Cancer Institute gave this grant to Sanford University, whose researchers admitted, “To fully reap the benefits of the smart toilet, users must make their peace with a camera that scans their anus.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases spent $478,188 in an attempt turn monkeys transgender. The National Science Foundation gave a $300,000 grant for a virtual reality penguin study and gave Harvard $75,000 grant to “blow lizards off trees with leaf blowers.”
Somehow, Congress still has their hidden slush fund for workplace disputes. First uncovered during the early days of the #MeToo movement, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights paid $18.2 million since 1997 to settle 291 cases of workplace disputes. It’s beyond time to open those books.
When flashing back to egregious spending examples in recent years, we uncovered:
In 2018, the U.S. Air Force spent $1,280 per “hot cup” to keep coffee warm for their fighter pilots. Then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley asked the Air Force for an audit, which found it spent $300,000 on the expensive cups over three years. This waste was stopped.
In 2016, we found that Veterans Affairs spent $20 million on a high-end luxury art portfolio during a period when sick veterans were dying because the agency claimed a lack of budget to hire enough doctors. It was wasted on 27 foot Christmas trees costing $21,000; six-figure artwork; and $700,000 sculptures.
Since 2020, federal spending has been especially wasteful, as the political class used the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to spend wildly on anything and everything under the sun.
Musician and former presidential candidate Kanye West, who claims a net worth of $3.2 billion, took $2.4 million in coronavirus relief from the PPP for his clothing and sneaker company, Yeezy LLC.
A legal loophole in the PPP was used by 125 defense firms with strong ties to the Communist Chinese Party to collect between $200-400 million to help American small businesses.
It’s an open question whether or not Chinese hackers funded an entire year of China’s military budget ($206 billion) by stealing U.S. unemployment aid. Primarily Chinese and Russian hackers stole up to $400 billion. It’s the largest public fraud in U.S. history.
Fully Staffed Public Relations
Don’t worry. Be happy. Washington spends billions on public affairs professionals tasked with breaking the bad news to us gently and with panache.
Don’t like the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan? The State Department bureaucrats can dress that up with a fleet of public relations officers. Is there really an illegal-entrant crisis on our southern border? Homeland Security employs nearly 500 PR officers to tell you that everything will be okay.
Between 2007 and 2014, the federal government spent $4.4 billion on salaries and benefits for PR officers in the agencies, as well as contracts with outside public relations firms.
In 2014, there were 3,092 public relations officers — known to journalists as “press flacks” — in over 200 federal agencies. By 2020, the headcount of PR officers rose to 3,847 with more than half of them, 2,364 making six figures in base pay alone.
Last year, when Dr. Anthony Fauci was on seemingly every news program in the country, the National Institutes of Health alone was paying no fewer than 86 public relations officers. The CDC and FDA collectively employed 81 additional PR officers.
Unfortunately, wasteful spending isn’t anything new. Beginning in 1975, then-Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the Golden Fleece Award to showcase wasteful and nonsensical spending.
If he were still alive and in office today, Proxmire would find a target-rich environment for his Golden Fleece award.