If you’re one of the millions of Americans digging around in your pocketbook for gift money this Christmas, you may want to stop reading now.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) just released his own version of the Government Wastebook, an annual tradition of shedding light on the federal government’s exorbitant and ridiculous spending practices first started by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
Lankford’s compilation of “federal fumbles,” which includes millions spent on things like a study into the history of tobacco use in Russia and military supplies for Yemen that somehow never made it out of a Virginia warehouse, would be hilarious if it weren’t so frustrating.
Here are a few of the most insane things the government blew a boatload of American tax dollars on last year:
1. Silent Shakespeare: $638,600
In a year when American families had to work 114 days to earn enough money to cover their complete yearly tax bill, NEA awarded a state partner—the Virginia Commission for the Arts—$683,600 for various arts-related projects. The program supported tens of thousands of dollars in funding for silent adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and others at a Washington, DC-area theater. The funding went to support the production costs of the Synetic Theater’s taxpayer-funded silent Shakespeare series. Synetic Theater received its highest recent award of $60,700 in 2013 from NEA’s partner, Virginia Commission for the Arts. Synetic also received $58,800 (2011-2012), $54,900 (2012-2013), and $35,100 (2015-2016).
2. Paid vacation for federal employees accused of misconduct: $3.1 billion
GAO released a report in fall 2014 to review the practices of five departments: DOD, VA, USAID, GSA, and DOI. GAO found these departments spent a combined $3.1 billion on workers who were placed on paid administrative leave from 2011 to 2013, $775 million of which went toward the salaries of 57,000 employees who were off work for one month or longer. This is money paid from taxpayers who actually work hard to earn their salaries.
3. Cell phone dieting programs for truckers: $2.6 million
From 2011 to 2015, NIH awarded Oregon Health & Science University a total of $2,658,929 to conduct a cell-phone-based program for a “weight loss competition” and “motivational interviewing.” The federal SHIFT program included an initial six-month weight-monitoring program followed by a 30- month follow-up study. The shocking conclusion reached in the 2009 report: individuals who completed motivational interviewing sessions and computer-based training were better able to make healthy living decisions. Those who engaged in the challenging six-month study were then given the chance to participate in a 30-month study.
4. Studying gnatcatchers: $283,500
FWS listed the coastal CAGN, a tiny blue-gray bird, as a “threatened” species in 1993. Earlier this year, DOD issued a grant worth $283,500 to survey “at least ten California gnatcatcher (CAGN) pairs in order to determine use throughout each vegetation alliance.” Thankfully DOD provides an explanation for this, which includes monitoring of CAGN nests, the ability of baby CAGNs to learn to fly, and the temperature and availability of food around the nest. The surveyor would also document any instances of cowbirds, another small bird, laying eggs in CAGN nests. (Note: Evidently the Cowbirds tend to do this for some reason.)
5. Killer snails: $50,000
NSF provided a $50,000 grant to support a project named "Killer Snail: An Interactive Marine Biodiversity Learning Tool." This project is intended to target elementary school students through the development of "an eBook dramatic story told from a snail's point of view, and a mobile video game allowing players to experience and explore the life of marine snails."
6. Russian cigarettes: $48,500
NIH’s stated mission is “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” Perhaps running counter to the mission, in April 2015 NIH announced a $48,500 grant to produce a book entitled, Cigarettes and Soviets: The Culture of Tobacco Use in Modern Russia. While the title harkens images of a James Bond movie, the grant will go to pay a historian to write “the first solo-authored monograph in Russian or English to explore the history of tobacco use and government- initiated cessation programs in Russia in the context of the country's complex social, cultural, and political changes of the past 130 years.”
7. Teaching State Department employees to tell the truth: $545,000
The cost of telling the truth? Apparently, it is $545,000 at State. In March 2014 State’s School of Leadership and Management sought a contractor to provide training courses to “senior level officials on effective congressional testimony and briefing skills.” The name of the course? “Communicating with Congress: Briefing and Testifying.” Additionally the contractor would assist with the design of congressional testimony prep classes for individuals who are nominated to be ambassadors and one-on-one classes for individuals set to testify before Congress.
So basically American taxpayers paid more than $500,000 to have a contractor teach people how to sit before a congressional committee and answer questions.
8. Robot dressers: $1.2 million
Parents around the nation know the daily struggle of picking out clothes and ensuring their young children get dressed each day before school. It seems NSF believes the challenge does not get easier with age. NSF has spent nearly $1.2 million to teach robots how to choose outfit combinations for and dress the elderly. NSF anticipates spending at least four years to work through the kinks.
9. Wild horse management: $67.9 million
To comply with the law, [the Bureau of Land Management] must conduct an annual census of [wild horse and burros] roaming the 179 Herd Management Areas in the West—a vast area of 26.9 million acres. BLM must also determine the number of animals the managed areas can reasonably sustain. In March 2015 for example, an estimated 58,150 WHBs roamed ranges able to tolerate just 26,715.
… In FY 2014 alone, costs for the program totaled $67.9 million, 63 percent of which went to off-range holding expenses at a cost of almost $4 per day, per animal.
10. Dancing Raisins: $3 million
Every year, the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service’s (FAS) Market Access Program (MAP) gives nearly $200 million in American tax money to companies and trade groups to subsidize the advertising, market research, and travel costs of their overseas product promotions. The MAP is one of five FAS programs that provides $2 billion annually to support foreign market access for U.S. products. Annual winners of the federal funds include successful corporations like Blue Diamond, Sunkist, and Welch’s.
… One example of the use of MAP funds was a $3 million advertising campaign in Japan in the 1990s. The campaign featured the animated dancing raisins and used the theme song “I Heard It through the Grapevine.” Tragically the song could not be translated into Japanese, and they just ran the ad in English. The result was incomprehensible shriveled dancing figures that disturbed Japanese children, who thought they were potatoes or chunks of chocolate. Moreover, their four-fingered hands made the viewers think of criminal syndicate members whose little fingers are cut off as an initiation rite. For some reason the Raisin Board struggled to sell their product in Japan during this promotional period, and the U.S. wound up spending $2 on promotional costs for every dollar’s worth of raisins that made it to the shelves.
11. Studying why politics stresses people out: $149,000
Last year, NSF awarded a nearly $150,000 grant for a researcher “to better understand which facets of social interaction about politics are the most stress inducing, for which kinds of people, and in which contexts.”
We could have saved them – or rather, ourselves – a lot of money on that last one. It’s a bunch of politicians spending our money on stupid stuff, for all people, all the time.