As we prepare to enter the new year, we’re taking you back to some of The Daily Wire’s best reporting from 2024. This article was originally published on November 16.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have their work cut out for them.
The pair is heading up the meme-worthy Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), part of President-elect Donald Trump’s effort to slash the federal bureaucracy and runaway spending.
Both entrepreneurs have said they’ll take an aggressive approach with the project, and there is no shortage of places they could start.
The government spends $6.75 trillion a year. Already this year, federal spending has increased by $114 billion. Within that massive amount is a seemingly never-ending list of eyebrow-raising expenditures.
Around $900 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars were counted last year in Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) “Festivus Report,” his annual tally of government waste that highlights glaring and often humorous examples.
Among the bigger expenses, in fiscal year 2023, the Treasury spent $659 billion on just the interest on the national debt, much of that borrowed from China, the report noted.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent $200 million on pandemic support to “small business” artists that ended up including big names like Usher, Nickelback, Post Malone, Chris Brown, Smashing Pumpkins, and Lil Wayne, the report said.
Also, fraudsters used the faces of Barbie dolls as profile pictures to apply for the SBA’s pandemic Paycheck Protection Program, and the program “carelessly approved” the fraudsters and sent them money, the report said.
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Another money pit was multiple frivolous National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies involving monkeys.
The NIH paid a local company $33.2 million to care for about 3,000 monkeys on a South Carolina island before they are sent to research labs around the country, the report said.
The NIH also approved funding for researchers to study the sleep habits of monkeys who were given meth in the morning, according to the report.
Another monkey example involved a study focusing on trans-identifying men and HIV. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) spent more than $477,000 on the study, which gave male monkeys female hormones to examine how cross-sex hormones might affect the immune systems of trans-identifying men when it comes to HIV.
In another outlandish example, the NIH approved a grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, the report said.
The NIH also funded a $3.8 million study on “COVID-19 misinformation exposure on social media among Black and Rural communities,” the report said.
The U.S. also spent taxpayer dollars boosting tourism in Egypt. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) approved $6 million for this purpose, according to the report.
The Biden administration spent a whopping $236 billion on “improper payments” — payments made to the wrong person, in the wrong amount or for the wrong reason, the report said.
The Department of Agriculture spent taxpayer dollars on “cutting- edge” research that measured the rectal temperatures of 16 dogs and found that their fur color did not affect their body temperatures after a hot summer walk, the report said.
On the military side, the Department of Defense destroyed more than $169 million of military equipment simply by leaving it outside, the report said. The Air Force also massively overpaid for soap dispensers, spending $149,072 more than it had to, according to a Defense Department inspector general report.
Many floors of office space sit empty in federal government buildings, a March report found. Agencies use just 12% of the office space at their headquarters on average.
At one point, Agriculture Department employees used their government credit cards to pay for things like cars, concert tickets, lingerie, tattoos, and bartender school.
These are just a few examples of the government throwing taxpayer dollars at things that would make many American jaws drop.
