EDITORIAL: Pigeons playing slots: Your tax money at work

Amid the holiday season, let us not forget the contribution of Frank Costanza, who popularized Festivus, the ceremonial airing of grievances, as an antidote to the commercialism of Christmas. The mental health advantages of such venting are obvious, particularly during the resurgent pandemic.

For Sen. Rand Paul this tradition comes in the form of an annual December report on wasteful government spending. The Kentucky Republican has picked up the mantle from the late Sen. William Proxmire, a Wisconsin Democrat who issued a monthly Golden Fleece Award beginning in March 1975 to highlight a particularly egregious example of taxpayer abuse, and the late Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who during the Obama administration issued an annual Wastebook filled with questionable federal expenditures.

Sen. Paul points out that, five years ago, Congress could have balanced the federal budget by cutting one penny off every dollar spent. Now that’s up to five cents, he reports. “You’d almost think the government’s annual New Year Resolution is to spend more and more money,” Sen. Paul writes. “Well, it is!”

The varied and creative ways Congress takes your money and sets it aflame is impressive. And with President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats insisting that the Treasury can print unlimited funds with no ill consequences, the waste will get only worse in coming years. For now, however, these miscues should bring the blood to a boil.

■ U.S. taxpayers got soaked thanks to lax underwriting standards of the Paycheck Protection Program. According to Sen. Paul’s report, the Small Business Administration “sent as much as $4.29 billion to people who weren’t eligible to receive loans or who received duplicate loans.” That’s because the agency ignored the Treasury’s Do Not Pay list, which includes problem businesses, including owners who have been convicted of fraud.

■ The federal government’s track record on pandemic unemployment payments was even worse. By November 2020, the inspector general for the Department of Labor found that the unemployment insurance “program had already paid out as much as $36 billion in improper payments from the CARES Act alone.” This was nothing new, however. The program has “an improper payment rate above 10 percent for 14 of the last 17 years,” according to the IG report.

■ The Agriculture Department continues to spend millions each year to ensure a regular supply of animals may be sacrificed for scientific research. One company has received $4.5 million over the past decade to breed ferrets, despite the fact that an undercover operation found “ferrets dying in feces, run over by carts, thrown alive into incinerators (and) hanging from wire,” the Paul report notes. The government has yet to revoke the contract.

■ The National Science Foundation paid a film company $2 million in tax money to create a movie and other media ventures about dinosaurs in an effort to get more American middle-schoolers interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

■ The National Institutes for Health “granted Reed College of Portland, Oregon, $465,339 to create a token-based economy where pigeons are taught to gamble with slot machines,” Sen. Paul reports. Researchers explained that the findings could be used to study “behavioral economics” in humans.

■ The National Science Foundation gave $2.85 million to the Boston PBS affiliate to produce three shows exploring “the dramatic seasonal changes of spring.” Never mind that the National Geographic already offers a similar compilation — privately funded, by the way. Sen. Paul’s report describes the PBS debacle as “three hours of screen time about an experience that most folks can have by simply walking out of their home.”

■ In fiscal 2019, the Social Security Administration overpaid recipients by $4.2 billion and is unlikely to recover much of the loss. Managers blamed a glitch in their computer system, but admitted that the administration had completely deleted information regarding $1.2 billion of the overpayments.

In all, Sen. Rand’s 2021 Festivus report spotlights nearly $53 billion in dubious federal spending, likely just a snapshot of the overall waste. Yet still plenty of ammunition for American taxpayers eager to air their grievances about a federal government that seemingly recognizes no fiscal boundaries.