A Republican senator who publishes an annual report highlighting some of the federal government’s most wasteful spending released the latest version this week and it’s filled with head-scratching line expenditures.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) has published his “Federal Fumbles” volume as Congress and the White House spar over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling and if so, by how much. The White House wants a clean bill raising the limit; Republicans want to raise the limit while implementing major cuts in federal spending.
“The report details numerous examples of what Lankford calls wasteful and uneccessary uses of taxpayer funds that shouldn’t be priorities while the government racks up sky-high deficits,” Fox News reported on Thursday.
The GOP senator said the annual report “is a focus on where are we’re wasting American taxpayer dollars and where is the federal government overregulating so that they are literally fumbling the ball.”
“So our focus is not just wasteful spending, it’s also activities from the federal government that they’re doing things they should not do,” he added.
As the national debt stands at $31 trillion, Lankford told Fox News Digital that “right now, the Biden administration is saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want to negotiate on the debt ceiling. Everything’s fine. In fact, we want to increase spending.’”
“No one believes that the federal government is totally efficient. Let me bring you some examples of this,” Lankford said. “And you tell me if this is what the federal government should do.”
“So, we did a whole grant for helmet and seatbelt studies in Ghana. We did a Shakespeare on the border to do a grant to present a new cultural praxis in decolonization at the US-Mexico borderlands,” Lankford added. “There was a study of colonial sounds in Mexico.”
“We put in a $4 million wine walking trail in Napa Valley, California, with federal dollars,” Lankford went on. “That is one of the wealthiest communities in the world. Why are the people of Oklahoma helping pay for a wine trail in Napa Valley, California? We put the new fire alarm system into the Metropolitan Opera, which I’m not sure why, again, the people of Oklahoma should be paying for the fire alarm system in the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.”
He went on to say that while some studies and other activities seem fine, he wonders why the federal government and American taxpayers have to pay for them.
“For instance, we did an award for a grant and study the secret language that butchers use in Paris, France, in the 13th century,” Lankford said. “Okay, fine. If somebody wants to study butcher language in France in the 13th century, that’s fine. Why am I paying for that study in the federal tax dollars?”
Other “Top 10” federal receipts include the National Science Foundation spending $660,422 to “study the impact COVID had on Russian women,” $11.3 million on the VA offering veterans abortions, and a $66,000 funding a book titled “Mexican Soundscapes of the Colonial Era.”
