For the past decade, Rand Paul has been issuing an annual report on government waste. A highlight reel of some of the worst fiscal abuses of the public trust and its tax dollars. This year the Kentucky Senator has accumulated another sliver of fiscal abuse and shared it with the world.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” Paul wrote in the report. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, 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 keep demanding even more.”
Here are a few of the winners in this contest of systemic waste.
- Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime: The federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings
- A Pandemic Plunder: A Florida man stole $8 million in COVID-19 Relief funds to buy an island and more
- Your Tax Dollars at Play: The Department of the Interior (DOI) spent $12 Million on a Las Vegas Pickleball Complex
- Taxpayers Fund a Disinformation Index: The Department of State (DOS) wasted $330,000 to fund censorship of nonliberal and conservative media
- The Influencer Effect Hits Foreign Policy: The Department of State (DOS) squandered $4,840,082 on influencers
- Girls Just Wanna Have Funds: The Department of State (DOS) spent $3 Million for ‘Girl-Centered Climate Action’ in Brazil
- Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, There Goes Your Tax Dollars Too! The federal government spent $7,026,689 on various magical projects
- Because Who Needs a Secure U.S. Border, Anyway? The Department of State (DOS) spent $2.1 million for Paraguayan Border Security
- Dragging Tax Dollars onto Thin Ice: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded the Bearded Ladies Cabaret a $10,000 grant to support a cabaret show on ice skates focused on climate change
- Despite empty offices, the federal government also spent $3.3 billion on high end office commodities between 2020 and 2022.
Some measure of fraud that follow every mass redistribution under the cover of things like COVID will be prosecuted, but the people and industries the program was created to enrich will not and that tells you who is a favored son or daughter and who is not.
Most, if not all, “handouts,” in my estimation, are created to support politically favorable infrastructure or demographics. To protect incumbency. To launder money into the hands of those who convert it into activism or promote policies to advance or sustain legislative action.
It’s all a fraud.
Even the welfare state exists, not to help people get back on their feet it is a trap meant to sustain, in perpetuity, a dependency class beholden to the checkwriters and their elected allies.
All of it needs to go, but Rand Paul’s Festivus Report gives DOGE a picture of a tree with a lot of low-hanging fruit.
