President Joe Biden's Administration allegedly wasted $10.5 trillion based on a report issued by United States Senator for Oklahoma James Lankford on Sunday.
Entitled "Federal Fumbles: Ways The Government Dropped The Ball," the report is the sixth volume in a series released by Senator James Lankford that exposes government inefficiency and waste. The report offers solutions on how the federal government's wasteful spending could be stopped immediately.
The report's preface is addressed to taxpayers to whom the senator presents the shocking national debt. Lankford projected that the only thing the federal government would be ahead of schedule come 2029 is the country's spending and debt.
"Put plainly, we need a total reassessment of how the government spends taxpayer dollars. When I first started Federal Fumbles in 2015, our national debt stood at $18 trillion(3). We have nearly doubled that within six years, and the pace simply keeps accelerating," Lankford said.
The report particularly dedicated a Spending Spree section, which identified where did all the government's money go. The section includes two tables. One that highlighted government spending in a particular month for a span of one year from March 2020 to March 2021 and another from November 2021 to the present.
In the first table, a total of $5.6 trillion was spent for coronavirus preparedness and relief, with the biggest ($1.8 trillion) used in March 2021 for the American Rescue Plan. The second table, on the other hand, highlighted that $1.4 trillion was spent on the infrastructure bill in November 2021 and for the recently approved Build Back Better Plan of $3.5 trillion. Totaling $10.5 trillion in government spending as of date.
CBN News said the report goes further by digging deeper into the Biden Administration's spending for Medicare, Social Security, and national highway funding. In the report's summary, the senator identified 10 fumbles in government spending, which he coined as "Border Boondoggle," "Robot Dogs," "Championing China," "Russian History," "Hanging Around," "Ski Jumping," "Fishing In Guam," "Soft On Crime, All In On Drugs," "The Lobster Lobby," and "Sidewalks & Bike Trail."
According to the Top 10 Fumbles, two authors were commissioned by the National Endowment for the Humanities to write on Russian art for $120,000. While the National Institutes of Health awarded $1.7 million to the Peking University for a Chinese aging survey and $606,000 to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention for influenza surveillance and research.
Lankford highlighted that Biden "was so determined to leave the border open, he spent (read: wasted) well over $2 billion to not build fencing." The senator said Biden released a $30 million grant for "safe smoking kits" as a means to combat drug smuggling and crime through the border. This is supported by the robot dogs, which costs $90,000 to $150,000 each, that will be deployed at the border by the Department of Homeland Security to stop illegal immigration.
In addition, $3 million was spent on a fisherman's cooperative in Guam and $500,000 was used to revamp New Hampshire's Nansen Ski Club ski jump. This excludes the $765,000 released to Maine to study the future of the lobster industry and $569,000 to Connecticut to remove their lobster pots. Thus, totaling $1.3 million for the lobster lobby.
Millions were also spent for sidewalks and bike trail projects, which included Rhode Island's $960,000 Purgatory Road and $500,000 bike path bridges. Plus, Florida's $2.9 million Palmetto Trails; Connecticut's $424,000 Country Club Road replacement; and Vermont's $2 million bike trails. Then there's the National Endowment for the Arts spending more than $20 million on dance performances, theatre, and opera including $15,000 on a monkey opera.
"After two years of overspending on 'COVID,' it is time now more than ever to look at how the government has dropped the ball and push for real solutions to recover before more damage is done," Lankford ended.
