Freedom Line Blog

You’ve really got to hand it to Senator Tom Coburn. In a job where the only real responsibility is to raise your hand from time to time, the junior senator from Oklahoma has taken it upon himself to use the full powers of his office to fight for a smaller, less wasteful government. One of the mechanisms he employs in waging this battle is his annual “Wastebook Report,” chronicling the most outrageous excesses in federal spending over the past year. The 2011 version is now out and well worth a read (assuming you have blood pressure medication nearby). Here are just a few samples from Coburn’s collection of 100 outrages:

• $35 million of taxpayer money to pay for both major parties’ political conventions

• Around $500,000 to purchase equity in a Washington D.C. IHOP

• $120 million in benefits for federal employees who were ineligible — because they were dead

• Over $100,000 to preserve vintage video games

• $18 million in foreign aid … to China, our banker

• $100,000 for a celebrity chef road show in Indonesia

• $10 million to help develop a Pakistani version of “Sesame Street”

• Approximately $1 billion in falsely-claimed tax credits for household energy efficiency

• Nearly $1 million for an online soap opera about single mothers (starring Billy Dee Williams, no less)

• Over $175,000 to fund a study on the connection between cocaine use and risky sexual behavior … in quail

• Half a million dollars for research on the trustworthiness of tweets

• $4.4 billion in wartime contracting fraud

• Over $200,000 for an online organic farming video game based on Michelle Obama’s White House vegetable garden.

• $600,000 for research on why chimps throw their own feces.

With this report, Tom Coburn is earning his taxypayer-funded salary. He may be the only one.