EDITORIAL: 2025 Festivus Report: Millions for dosing dogs with cocaine

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has a problem with the federal government — and now you’re gonna hear about it!

In the spirit of the late Sen. William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Awards and former Sen. Tom Coburn’s annual Wastebook, Sen. Paul this week released his 2025 Festivus Report. The analysis is named for the phony holiday concocted by Frank Costanza on “Seinfeld” to justify his “airing of grievances.”

As the national debt barrels toward $40 trillion, Sen. Paul’s list of wasteful federal endeavors is timely and relevant. “Congress keeps shoveling money toward pet projects and special interests while hardworking Americans pay the price through inflation and crushing interest rates,” his report notes.

Here is an abbreviated list of the spending Sen. Paul singles out:

■ The National Science Foundation spent $2.5 million on programs such as the Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming and the Center for Insect Biomanufacturing and Innovation, which promote insects as a potential “food for humans” as well as pets and livestock.

■ The $7.5 billion EV charger program, which in four years built only 384 ports across 16 states, “a network so faint you could miss it with your eyes open,” Sen. Paul observes. A judge blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to pull the plug, but pending legislation would end the subsidies and encourage the EV industry to “stand on its own four wheels instead of relying on Washington’s endless extension cord.”

■ The Department of Agriculture spent $141,000 on “a ‘resilient and equitable’ local food network that prioritizes culturally relevant food for low-income LGBT people of color from the Bronx and Brooklyn.”

■ The National Institutes for Health dedicated $5.15 million to a program that doses dogs with cocaine. The Department of Veteran Affairs spent more than $1 million on a program that teaches “teenage ferrets to binge drink alcohol.”

■ USAID was so flush with cash that it spent $2 million on “gender-affirming care, activism and influence campaigns in Guatemala.”

Sen. Paul’s Festivus 2025 — like the annual reports that precede it — is useful in highlighting that there is virtually no limit to the federal largess that politicians and bureaucrats shower on various special interests. The rampant spending betrays an attitude that has led the nation down a dangerous fiscal path. American taxpayers now must pay more than $1 trillion annually simply to service the soaring debt.

“No matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can’t help but demand more,” Sen. Rand concludes. “Fiscal responsibility may not be the most crowded road, but it’s one I’ve walked year after year.” And it will remain a lonely road until more voters stop tolerating politicians who believe their primary job is to play Santa Claus year-round.