The 100 Worst Cases of Government Waste in 2010

The 100 Worst Cases of Government Waste in 2010


by Ben Johnson

Although the United States is $13 trillion in debt, mandatory spending alone exceeds tax revenues, and the Congressional Budget Office is warning of a coming U.S. “fiscal crisis,” Congress felt no need to trim spending. The just-adjourned 111th Congress headed by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi added more to the national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, has published his collection of the 100 most wasteful projects his colleagues deemed worthy of your hard-earned tax dollars this year. Among the most offensive, ridiculous, and startling examples of pork in the Year of our Lord 2010, he found:


■Nearly $5,000 of stimulus money to hire goats to graze the weeds at Idaho’s Heyburn State Park;
■$6 billion for ethanol subsidies, which raise food costs;
■$177,000 for Ohio teachers to travel to China to learn about the Chinese “education” system;
■$137,530 for a Dartmouth professor to develop “Layoff,” a video game that encourages its players to fire as many people as quickly as possible;
■$700,000 for New Hampshire researchers to examine “greenhouse gas emission from organic dairies,” which are cause by “cow burps, among other things”;
■$442,340 to study male prostitutes in Vietnam;
■$823,000 to teach South African men how to wash their genitals after sex. (We reported this one earlier this year);
■$55,000 to celebrate HIV Vaccine Awareness Day. Of course, there is no anti-AIDS vaccine, but the “observance is a day to recognize and thank” the professionals “who are working together to find” a cure;
■$571 million — more than half-a-billion dollars — diverted from building roads and infrastructure to plant flowers on the roadsides;
■$2.9 million to study how players of the online game World of Warcraft collaborate;
■$5,000 for the Murfreesboro, Tennessee public library to host video game nights, featuring Rock Band, Wii Bowling, and Mario Kart;
■$609,160 to develop a video game based on the life of a wolf;
■$615,000 for the University of California-Santa Cruz to digitize Grateful Dead memorabilia;
■$10,000 for the Woodstock Film Festival, attended by such elites as Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, and Uma Thurman;
■$150,000 for signs alerting drivers of crossing salamanders in Monkton, Vermont;
■Nearly $1 million to post snippets of poetry at zoos;
■$175 million for unused buildings, including an octagonal monkey house in Dayton, Ohio;
■$239,100 to study how singles use online dating sites while they are lookin’ for love;
■$31,350 for a comic book mouse who teaches children the history of printing;
■$112 million in fraudulent tax refunds for prisoners;
■$1.5 million for a museum in Shelby, North Carolina, to honor bluegrass banjo picker Earl Scruggs;
■$60,000 to renovate a pizzeria in Waterloo, Iowa; and
■$212,735 to study the state of “civility” in U.S. politics in Pullman, Washington. Liberals rediscover the virtues of “civility” every time a conservative criticizes a Democratic president.

These synopses hardly give their projects their proper due. Read about them, and 77 others, in the senator’s report. Download Sen. Coburn’s entire Wastebook 2010: A Guide to Some of the Most Wasteful Government Spending of 2010 here.
http://coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=774a6cca-18fa-4619-987b-a15eb44e7f18