Top Ten Things The Government Wastes Taxpayer Money On
TOM COBURN is a Republican senator from Oklahoma. Every year he releases the "Wastebook," which is a collection of examples of the 100 most wasteful things the government wasted your tax money in the past year, totaling $18 BILLION.
#1.) Moroccan pottery classes. The U.S. has spent $27 MILLION on a project to train people in Morocco to design and sell pottery at home and abroad. The classes suffered from language barriers with American teachers and flopped.
#2.) Robot squirrels. A part of a $325,000 grant was spent on a study that built a robotic squirrel to see how snakes would react to it.
#3.) Making pennies. In 2012, the cost to produce one penny was . . . two cents. And even though no one uses pennies anymore and making them is clearly inefficient, the government spent at least $120 MILLION making them.
#4.) Pet shampoo. A pet care company in Nebraska got $505,000 from a community development block grant to help install machines that make pet shampoo and toothpaste.
#5.) Food stamps for the dead. At least 2,000 dead people received food stamps last year and that's just in New York and Massachusetts.
#6.) The size of golf holes. Purdue University used part of a $350,000 grant on a study that concluded if golfers imagined they were putting into larger holes, they were more successful.
#7.) Better tasting beef jerky. The Pentagon has spent more than $1.5 MILLION trying to create a better-tasting beef jerky for soldiers.
#8.) The attractiveness of female fruit flies. More than $900,000 went toward a study that found female fruit flies lose their looks as they get older, and are less attractive to male fruit flies.
#9.) Food for Mars. Even though there's no plan to send people to Mars for at least two decades, NASA spent $1 MILLION developing recipes that could be eaten on Mars . . . including pizza and vegetarian options.
#10.) Gaydar. A $30,000 grant went to a study at the University of Washington to test if gaydar was real. They found people identify gay men's faces correctly 57% of the time, and lesbian women's faces correctly 65%.