5 Absurd Examples Of Government Waste In 2024

These are among numerous examples of why cries for a ‘balanced budget’ and an unconstitutional Department of Government Efficiency won’t solve the problem of lawless representatives violating their oaths of office and spending money and writing legislation on things they have zero authority to do so.  The Constitution is clear:  There are things our representatives can write legislation on and those things are what they may spend money on.  It is not a question of balancing a budget or determining efficiency.  It’s an issue of not spending money on things that they are not authorized to spend money on, period.

The Foundation for Economic Education has listed 5 ridiculous examples that our lawless, corrupt federal government has wasted debt money on in 2024.

Defenders of fiscal sanity have received quite a surprise with Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). For the first time in what seems like forever, complaining about government waste has almost become…cool.

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To all of the newcomers to this issue, we’d like to extend a warm welcome. Whether it was the DOGE hype or Milei’s chainsaw that brought you in—or, you know, a quick glance at the national debt—we’re glad you’re here.

We’d also like you to know about a tradition we have in these parts of the political compass. You see, long before there was DOGE and the chainsaw, there was Senator Rand Paul’s annual Festivus Report (and long before that was Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award). Named after the fictional “Festivus” holiday from Seinfeld, celebrated on December 23, the Festivus Report is a compilation of some of the most egregious examples of government waste from the year. Part of Festivus, you see, is the traditional “airing of grievances.”

This year marks the tenth edition of the Report, and as usual, it’s full of the most absurd boondoggles you’ve ever heard of. Here are some of the highlights.

1) Tax Dollars for…Pickleball?

The Department of the Interior is apparently investing in pickleball. Specifically, it recently provided a $12 million grant for a 30-court pickleball complex in Las Vegas.

Pickleball players in Vegas clearly benefit from this initiative. But is it really fair to force taxpayers in Connecticut to pay for sports complexes in Nevada?

Bastiat’s famous comment comes to mind: “Government is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

2) Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime

One of the surprisingly large sources of government waste is money spent on maintaining empty or largely-empty government buildings. Senator Paul cites a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that identified nearly $10 billion in federal funds wasted on empty office space.

“Most federal offices are ghost towns, with 17 out of 24 agencies using only 25% or less of their space in 2023,” Paul notes. “Even the busiest offices barely reach 50% capacity…The GAO calculated building capacity based on usable square feet per employee. It found that many of these buildings are just oversized, expensive storage units for empty desks.”

3) Promoting DEI Among Bird Watchers

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently spent close to $300,000 on what seems to be a DEI initiative for bird-watching groups.

“In yet another shining example of wasteful government spending, the National Science Foundation has decided that the world of bird watching needs a dose of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Paul writes. “To that end, they’ve approved a grant of $288,563 to create ‘affinity groups’ within ornithological societies—basically, birdwatching clubs—based on identity characteristics…The goal, they say, is to ensure that birdwatching communities are more ‘inclusive.’”

Regardless of where you stand on DEI, this kind of spending should raise a red flag on fiscal responsibility grounds alone. Surely there are more pressing needs than this? (Do the birds care about the gender identity of the people watching them?)

4) Advancing Fertilizer Use in Foreign Countries

The tragically misnamed United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is spending money on, well, not only the United States. The 2024 Festivus Report highlights that the USDA is spending $20 million on the Fertilize Right initiative “to advance fertilizer use in Pakistan, Vietnam, Colombia, and Brazil.”

This was one of a number of items in the Report that involved American taxpayer dollars going to foreign countries.

5) Money for Circus Performances

The 2024 Festivus Report highlights $365,000 that has been spent by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to promote circuses in city parks. Paul quotes the late David Boaz in his comments on this story: “Government funding of anything means government control. As we should not want an established church, so we should not want established art.”

Concentrated Benefits and Dispersed Costs

Why does such government waste persist year after year? A significant part of the explanation traces back to the concept of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Essentially, the beneficiaries tend to be a small, concentrated group, so they lobby hard for these outlays because they stand to gain a lot from them. Taxpayers, on the other hand, tend to be dispersed and only minimally affected by any single expense, so it’s not usually worth it for them to lobby against the spending, or even learn about it in the first place.

Economist Gordon Tullock famously illustrated this concept with his fictional Tullock Economic Development Plan. The plan “involves placing a dollar of additional tax on each income tax form in the United States and paying the resulting funds to Tullock, whose economy would develop rapidly.”

Think about the incentive Tullock would have to advocate for this plan, compared to the incentive that an ordinary taxpayer would have to look into it and voice their objections. With campaign contributions and votes to be gained from the special interest beneficiaries, is it any wonder politicians often go for these kinds of wealth transfers?

The ubiquity and stubborn persistence—year after year—of all this waste, combined with the economic theory that explains why it happens, suggests that there is a fundamental problem with the process of government as we know it. This is not, as many are itching to believe, a “Democrat” problem or a “Republican” problem. The degree of government waste changes very little with changing administrations. No, this is a problem with the government as such.

To solve this problem, we need to ask not just who should run the government, but what the government should be allowed to spend money on in the first place, given what we know about its entirely predictable and repeatedly demonstrated propensity for waste and dysfunction.

Milei has already started that conversation in Argentina. Let’s hope that with the new Trump administration and DOGE, that’s a conversation we can have here as well.

I’m actually not hopeful about anything concerning DOGE as neither of the guys involved know the Constitution nor will they obey it.  They are all about their own profits and advancing a particular agenda, but it’s not the People’s agenda.

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media