$1.5 Million to Walk Lizards on Treadmills? Ten Crazy Things Uncle Sam Spent Your Money on This Year

Every year on December 23, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., publishes a “Festivus Report” highlighting insane items the federal government spent your taxpayer dollars on. This year’s report does not disappoint.

“Your government is out of control, and a LOT of us have grievances,” Sen. Paul wrote on Twitter. “We will talk about Congress, Petty Tyrants all over, foreign aid, wasteful spending, science denying ‘experts’ and other holiday goodies. This is not the time for holiday cheer! That’s for TOMORROW, AFTER we air our grievances.”

Festivus, a less popular secular holiday celebrated on December 23, includes an “airing of grievances” and was popularized in 1997 by the television show “Seinfeld.” Sen. Paul takes the opportunity to air his grievances against the federal government’s wasteful spending and his fellow congressmen.

Listed in Sen. Paul’s “Festivus Report 2020” includes dozens of crazy items the federal government spent over $54 billion on this year, “enough to buy every American a new 40” flatscreen TV.” The report notes that this spending wasted the taxpayer dollars of over 5.4 million citizens.

Here are the top 10 items the government wasted your money on this year (chosen by yours truly):

• $1,327,781.72 to study whether Americans will eat ground-up bugs.
• $1,471,617.00 to get Eastern Mediterranean youth to stop smoking hookah.
• $6,973,057.00 worth of cancer research money to create a “smart toilet.”
• $2,004,704.00 to test whether hot tubbing can help lower stress.
• $150,000 to fund classes for Kenyan artists and performers.
• $48,000,000 to help disconnected Tunisian youth not feel like a problem.
• $200,000 for book clubs for Pakistani and Afghan kids.
• $1,557,083.00 to walk lizards on treadmills.
• $19,999,869.00 to rebuild a taxiway for airplanes on Nantucket Island
• $4,575,431.00 to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine.

The Hill writes that this is the sixth report that Sen. Paul has published.

“I am a happy warrior and will continue to sound the alarm on waste, fraud, and abuse of your taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Paul wrote in this year’s report. “Like I said last year, Congress has every tool it needs to fight and end government waste. It’s just a matter of finding the willpower to use them. Rest assured, I will keep fighting for fiscal sanity and providing my colleagues in Congress with the opportunity to find their fiscal backbone!”

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Photo from Paul Rand