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Kentucky Senator Rand Paul released the 2023 Festivus report on Friday, December 22, where he criticized the Congress members for extravagant spending. He took to X as well and wrote that the report found $900 billion in federal waste this year.
As per Senator Paul, the $900 billion includes $659 billion in national debt after the government went overboard by spending $1.7 trillion in the current fiscal year. He said Congress voted this year to inflate the debt ceiling, which enabled the government to borrow an incalculable amount of money until the next fiscal year.
Paul said that last year’s Festivus lamented the national debt of $30 trillion. He then mocked how this year, the bureaucrats and “career politicians” managed to increase the debt to $34 trillion.
He blamed the spenders for sending the USA’s “hard-earned” money to fund wars and other aid to foreign countries while ignoring the border problem in the south. Senator Paul said their debt will continue to increase even more as the Congressional Budget Office has predicted the debt addition of an average of $2 trillion annually for the next ten years.
An X user commented under Rand Paul's tweet mentioning the Festivus report and expressed their disappointment at the total spending in 2023.
Internet reacts as Rand Paul highlights the list of spending in the 2023 Festivus report
Senator Rand Paul lists around 22 instances in the 2023 Festivus report where, according to him, the US government wasted its taxpayers' dollars. Around $800 billion was spent on Barbie’s photo used as ID proof to receive COVID PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) funds.
Other notable instances include the NIH's (National Institute of Health) funding of $33.2 million for Dr. Fauci’s Monkey Island, The United States Agency for International Development’s approved $6 million to boost Egyptian tourism, NIH’s $12 million funding for the study of meth-head monkeys at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and a portion of $3.7 million for the study of gambling habits in monkeys.
Netizens were enraged after learning of the report and how much money the US government had supposedly wasted instead of using it to clear the national debt or spend it on better causes.
Senator Rand Paul broke down last year’s $482 billion wasteful spending, which included billions spent on COVID relief funds and a study to determine whether MCU’s supervillain Thanos would be able to snap his fingers in reality, wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.
