Happy Festivus!

The Daily Wire reports, “On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) released his 2021 ‘Festivus’ Report, which detailed a total of $52,598,515,585 in government waste.

Paul is chairman of the Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight (ETSO) Subcommittee for the Homeland Security and is on the Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

According to @RandPaul’s 2021 #FestivusReport, the federal government wasted over $52 billion this year. As Biden says, that’s billion, with a B. My latest for @realDailyWire.https://t.co/MBClVv6Qc0

— Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) December 22, 2021

This marks Dr. Paul’s and the subcommittee’s seventh edition of the Festivus Report, which the Senator described as a way to ‘alert the American people to how their federal government uses their hard-earned money.’

Areas of spending are broken down into various sections, including COVID-related spending, Afghanistan, and miscellaneous expenditure. Examples include $11.3 million spent by the USAID on telling the people of Vietnam ‘to stop burning their trash,’ Congress giving the Wilson Center — which ‘throws swanky parties for members of congress’ — $14 million, and over $465,000 granted by the NIH to Reed College of Portland, Oregon, to ‘create a token-based economy where pigeons are taught to gamble with slot machines.’

‘Happy Festivus! How can 2021 already be coming to a close? What a year it’s been,’ the report begins. ‘And, it’s safe to say that some big changes have occurred since last year’s Festivus Report. Mask mandates, travel restrictions and lock-downs were lifted across many parts of the country. President Biden was inaugurated. Inflation has skyrocketed. The Kardashians finally ended their TV show after 14 years. ‘Dad bod’ was officially added to Webster’s Dictionary. And how about the Federal government? Well, unsurprisingly, it managed to keep spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

Read the entire story.