Russian cats walking on treadmills, Barbies used for proof of ID and $200million to ‘struggling artists’ like Post Malone and Chris Brown: Rand Paul lays out the staggering waste of taxpayer funds in 2023

Libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul released his ninth annual “festivus” report, detailing some $900 billion in government waste this year.

Such waste included photos of Barbie dolls held up for identification by fraudsters looking to steal money from the Covid Paycheck Protection Program, $33 million going to a “monkey colony” in South Carolina, $6 million for Egyptian tourism and a grant. of almost $1 million. to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a study of Russian cats on treadmills.

The investigation also revealed about $38 million in Covid payments going to dead people. The federal government also made as much as $236 billion in “improper federal payments,” whether through Medicaid, unemployment or tax credits.

Another $4 million was spent studying 'misinformation' about Covid in black and rural communities.

It also noted that about $200 million was distributed as Covid relief through the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program. Artists including Post Malone, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown and Smashing Pumpkins received $10 million each from the program, aimed at helping small business owners.

U.S. Army officials improperly stored “80 gas turbine engines” worth $89 million and 135 hydraulic transmissions worth $12 million and wasted “117,534 vehicle track shoes” worth $68.29 million, according to the report. had been left outside in the open air. .

“Don't leave it out in the rain” seems like simple and basic training,” Paul mused.

The Department of Defense spent another $9,000 on a lobster tank.

The taxpayer-funded NIH conducted a $12 million study on the sleep habits of monkeys given meth in the morning.

Monkeys were dosed and monitored 'via implanted wire leads that 'ran subcutaneously from the head incision to the eye orbit and exiting the eye orbit under the upper eyelid.'

Paul noted that $400 million sits untouched in a presidential campaign fund. When Americans fill out their tax returns, there is a box they can check if they want $3 to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Account, a fund for campaigns that no presidential candidate has ever accepted.

In another controversial NIH study that cost taxpayers $3.7 million, monkeys were forced to gamble for their drinking water after researchers removed part of their skulls and injected them with tracers to monitor their brains.

Paul contacted Dr. Anthony Fauci for NIH animal testing.

'Under Dr. Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was back to wasting money and torturing animals,” he wrote, referring to a study on transgender monkeys.

“The NIAID is using $477,121 of your tax dollars to fund the forced feminization of male rhesus monkeys. Using taxpayer money from NIAID, a laboratory in Florida set out to investigate what would happen if female hormones were given to male monkeys.'

'The laboratory has been working to make male laboratory monkeys 'transgender' to address 'social injustices' suffered by 'transgender people', such as 'transgender women (TGW) – individuals who were assigned a male set at birth, but changed their gender expressing along a feminine spectrum.'

Meanwhile, the US debt has reached $34 trillion, up from $30 trillion in 2022. This year, about $659 billion went to interest on the debt.

'Who is responsible for our crushing debt burden? Everyone,” Paul wrote in the report. “This year, members of both parties in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the government to borrow an unlimited amount of money until 2024. While Congress spends money to reward its pet industries and pet projects, American taxpayers are forced to pay the price through record high inflation and crippling interest rates.”

He added: “The same big spenders once again teamed up to send Americans' hard-earned money abroad and fund endless wars, while ignoring our porous southern border.”