Senator Rand Paul (R- Ky.) recently released his annual "Festivus Report" detailing rampant waste in spending by the federal government.

For instance, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent $11.3 million, in part, in an effort aimed at getting Vietnamese citizens to stop burning their trash.  (It might just as well have burned the $11.3 million.)  The federal government spent $25 million to help New York City display art projects around its boroughs.  (Yes, defund the police, but make sure criminals are inspired by art.)

The federal government also reportedly donated $14 million to the Wilson Center, a Washington think-tank known for putting on parties for members of Congress.  Well, Congress controls the purse strings, and what better way to use taxpayers' money than to throw itself lavish soirées?

One point three million dollars went to a study, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), to determine how hearing good or bad news affects peoples' happiness.  (Guess what!  People are happier upon hearing good news than upon receiving bad news!  I would have told them that for 1.3 million pennies.)

Incredibly, though the Biden administration halted construction of the wall on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, Paul said the federal government saw fit to give the Department of Defense $250 million to build border walls in the Middle East and North Africa.  And why do walls work in places like Hungary, China, Israel, and North Africa...but not here in the States?  Why do they work when surrounding the homes of progressive politicians like Barack Obama, but not when utilized to protect their own country's borders?  And why is the Department of Defense helping to defend foreign nations but not its own?

The government's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD) awarded $361,000 to the University of Buffalo for a study that, remarkably, confirmed that children not only crave junk food, but gain weight when they eat too much of it.

The U.S. federal government, via its National Institute of Health (NIH), also gave more than $465,000 to Portland, Oregon's Reed College to fund a study on gambling that taught pigeons to play slot machines.

Sen. Paul released a statement to the Daily Wire in which he noted, "It seems like just yesterday the national debt was $20 trillion, but now the U.S. has managed to breeze past $28 trillion, spending and wasting more than we ever have."

But remember, Sen. Paul, that people are happier after hearing good news.  So let's focus on the fact that we now have pigeons capable of playing slot machines.

See also: Festivus: Rand Paul fishes up the worst in government waste on Joe Biden's watch.

Photo credit: Twitter screen grab.