Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is celebrating Festivus, the secular holiday popularized by the hit TV series “Seinfeld,” by airing his grievances about government waste.
“At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!” Frank Costanza, the fictional creator of the holiday said of the ritual on the now-famous episode.” And Paul has no shortage of bones to pick with the government due to its questionable spending habits.
“Happy Festivus! Once again, the federal government found new and inventive ways to waste hardworking Americans’ tax dollars,” he wrote. “In its second year, The Waste Report has highlighted many examples for a total of nearly two billion dollars’ worth of wasteful spending, misplaced priorities, and bad management.”
The senator’s waste report found $1,404,471,000 in wasted taxpayer dollars spent on programs for things like business plans for illegal immigrants and a studies looking into people’s experiences with sea monsters, invisible birds and other supernatural activity.
Other instances of dubious federal spending featured on the list include $500,000 in government funds used to produce a documentary about a metal cylinder, $500,000 spent on a study on selfies and $2.5 million used to look into what goes into the “perfect first date.”
Paul, a fiscal hawk, said the biggest waster of all is the interest on the country’s debt, “which takes the first $800 of your taxes and does not pay one salary or buy one paper clip.”
“We’ve got a lot of problems with how our tax dollars are spent!” he said.
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