Along with Christmas cheer and wishes for a happy New Year, there’s another traditional event right about now every year; that would be the release of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) Festivus Report, detailing trillions in federal spending lunacy. And this year, like most years, Senator Paul has uncovered some doozies.
‘Tis the season for FESTIVUS🌲
This year’s waste report tallies an
UNBELIEVABLE $1,639,135,969,608💸Read the report, air your grievances, and let us know which items are your favorite. pic.twitter.com/lIg65SazAJ
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 23, 2025
That’s $1.6 trillion of your money and mine, spent on all manner of horse squeeze, much of it – heck, probably all of it – not found anywhere in the federal government’s constitutional prerogatives. $1.6 trillion – that’s a “t” followed by a “…rillion.” That’s money taken out of the national economy, money that could be otherwise put to use starting business ventures, inventing new products or improving existing ones, or just buying groceries – and instead, it’s spent on, well, everything in this report.
Read More: $37 Trillion Is a Whole Lotta Money
Big: Federal Government on Track to Reduce Workforce by 300,000 in 2025
Let’s look at some highlights from the report. First, the summary:
We discovered cash going toward experiments teaching ferrets to binge drink alcohol and dosing dogs with cocaine (again). Then there were taxpayer dollars spent on safe spaces at a private university. It wouldn’t be a Festivus Waste celebration without mentioning the $2.1 million spent for researchers to collect saliva samples and survey partiers at EDM clubs and festivals in New York City about their drug use. White Coat Waste helped us uncover hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars funding labs, gain-of-function research, and brutal experiments on dogs, monkeys, and rats. That includes over $13.8 million on beagle experiments, $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a “Price Is Right”-inspired video game, and so much more.
Now, if drunken ferrets don’t make you mad enough to chew up iron bolts, if making monkey play video games doesn’t make your grip on your coffee mug tighten, well, let’s get into a few of the specifics.
Cartoon Climate Crusaders in Pakistan: The U.S. Department of State gave $244,252 to Stand for Peace in Islamabad to produce a television cartoon series that teaches kids in Pakistan how to fight climate change.
$244K may not be a whole lot in the grander scheme of things, but that’s not really the point, is it? The point is that even with President Trump vowing to clamp down on this sort of thing, this stupidity is still slipping through the cracks. And it’s a safe bet that Pakistani kids still don’t give an ounce of rat droppings over climate change, one way or the other.
But wait! There’s more!
Fauci’s Beagle Labs Live On: NIH extended funding for Dr. Fauci’s beagle experiments, costing taxpayers $13.8 million.
Coked-Up Canines Redux: NIH spent $5,215,216 to dose dogs with cocaine. Again.
Ferrets on a Booze Binge: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) wasted over $1,079,360 teaching teenage ferrets to binge drink alcohol.
Bird-Brained Spending in China: The Biden U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded a $1 million collaboration to soup up bird flu viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s parent organization and a researcher affiliated with WIV.
Oh, for the luvva Pete.
To call this wasteful is to engage in gross understatement. We could point to the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment, demanding someone identify where almost anything mentioned in this report is authorized for the federal government to be involved in at all. However, let’s face it, that ship sailed in about 1860. And while we’re facing up to unpleasant facts, Senator Paul’s report, infuriating as some (as in, almost all) of the specific items are, will not, in the end, make much difference. Washington will continue to spend on all this corral litter, Senator Paul will keep issuing his report every year, and the money spigots will remain open.
But then, the world’s got no shortage of windmills to tilt at.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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