Republican senator Rand Paul (Ky.) is continuing his Christmas tradition of bemoaning government waste.
The Republican's annual "Festivus Report" tallied up $1 trillion in spending on questionable projects across the federal government, as the national debt soars ever higher.
The report is named after a fictional holiday in the sitcom Seinfeld that invites celebrants to an "airing of grievances." The government's spending habits leave Paul, a fiscal conservative, with plenty to grump about each year.
This year, taxpayers spent nearly $5 million on pro-Ukrainian social media influencers and $12 million on a pickleball court in Las Vegas. $10,000 went to a climate change-themed "cabaret" involving drag queens in ice skates.
The government spent another $10 billion to maintain mostly empty office buildings and shoveled $330,000 to a liberal non-profit that tracks "disinformation," among other dubious expenditures.
Throughout his single term in office, President Biden signed several expensive spending bills that added trillions to the debt and drove inflation. Biden also worked around courts to forgive $180 billion in student loan debt, at taxpayer expense, and sent billions more to Ukraine even as a historic influx of people poured across the porous U.S. southern border.
But wasteful spending is a bi-partisan tradition, Paul noted in his report.
"Who’s to blame for our crushing national debt? Everybody," Paul writes in the new report. "This year, members of both political parties in Congress voted for massive spending bills, filled with subsidies for underperforming industries, continued military aid to Ukraine, and controversial climate initiatives. As Congress spends to reward its favored pet projects, the American taxpayers are forced to pay through high prices and crippling interest rates."
Government waste has become a hot topic as President-elect Trump prepares for a second White House term with a promise to radically cut bloat.
His Department on Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has set an ambitious target of slashing $2 trillion in spending.
The majority of federal spending goes toward the military and spending on entitlement programs like Social Security, which few politicians are willing to touch.
Paul was among 20 Republican senators who voted against a $200 billion bill to boost Social Security benefits last week. He called to offset the expense by raising the retirement age to 70, but his amendment was shot down.
“If we give new people more money, we have to take it from somewhere. We have to either borrow it or print it, but it has to come from somewhere,” Paul said.
