Coburn calls out Senate cohorts as biggest waste in government

Daily News Article — Posted on November 6, 2012

(by Stephen Dinan, WashingtonTimes.com) – The Senate’s top waste-watcher says the federal government is bloated with extra spending – including in the halls of Congress itself, where he says senators and staffers are collecting salaries while failing to do very much work.

Twenty senators haven’t had a single amendment considered on the chamber floor this year, and some of the most powerful committees have all but taken the year off, said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican.

The damning critique of his colleagues is part of Mr. Coburn’s “Wastebook 2012,” the latest installment in what has become an annual list of 100 curious federal spending decisions that Congress and federal agencies make each year. The book was released [in October].

Making the 2012 list are a $1.5 million grant to the University of Utah to study building a better computer gaming joystick, $100,000 to send a three-member American comedy troupe on a tour of India, and part of a $325,000 grant used to build a robotic squirrel, all to test whether it could scare a real snake.

The National Institutes of Health spent $939,771 on a study to discover that a male fruit fly, given the choice between a young female and an older female fly, chose the younger.

Waterloo, Iowa, is spending $145,000 in federal taxpayers’ money to put a statue of Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of the 31st president, in a new roadside park at the site of the Hoovers’ former home.

The NFL, the NHL, and the PGA classify themselves as non-profit organizations to exempt themselves from federal income taxes on earnings.

At a time when Congress and President Obama are fighting over the looming automatic across-the-board spending cuts, which all sides say are too blunt, Mr. Coburn said the Wastebook, which singles out $18.9 billion in spending, shows there are plenty of projects that can be cut if both sides would use a scalpel instead.

“The problem in Washington is politicians are very specific about what we should fund but not specific about what we should cut. As a result, we are chasing robotic squirrels and countless other low-priority projects over a fiscal cliff,” the senator said.

The government ran a deficit of $1.1 trillion in fiscal year 2012, which concluded Sept. 30, and is projected to flirt with a fifth straight trillion-dollar deficit next year.

Cutting spending, though, has proved to be difficult. Congress and Mr. Obama agreed to some limits, both in a 2011 spending bill and last year’s debt deal, but have struggled to cull entire programs and projects.

That is one reason this year’s Wastebook – Mr. Coburn’s third – turns its eye on the Senate itself.

Mr. Coburn charts the Senate committees that have held the fewest hearings this year: The Rules and Administration Committee, with just two, and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, with just four. The Small Business Committee passed only three bills this year — one of which authorized its own expenditures.

“All of the outrageous and wasteful contents of this report were made possible by either the action or lack of action of Congress, earning it the well-deserved but unwanted distinction as the biggest waste of taxpayer money in 2012,” he said in the report.

The previous two reports have been met with mixed reactions.

States whose projects were singled out complained that they were just following the rules Congress wrote for them — particularly on highway spending, which includes beautification and roadside parks.

Other projects have their defenders, such as some of the scientific research Mr. Coburn has questioned.

In this year’s report, he highlights the robotic squirrel, which researchers at San Diego State University and the University of California-Davis built using part of a $325,000 grant – all to test whether they could scare a real snake into thinking the squirrel was also real. …

The National Science Foundation, an independent government agency, has awarded the robot researchers $325,000 in an ongoing grant so far. … The foundation did not respond to a message seeking comment… Mr. Coburn’s report called the spending “a bit squirrelly.”

Mr. Coburn and the National Science Foundation have tangled before, when he tried to cut the foundation’s funding for political research at universities, arguing that political debates can survive without the government paying for research data.

This latest report singles out 10 projects that have received the foundation’s funding, including the study on male fruit flies’ age preferences in female partners. …

The ongoing research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Background

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2012” include:

• Tax loopholes for the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL) and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) – professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits ($91 million in taxes)

• Moroccan pottery classes (part of a $27 million grant from U.S. Agency for International Development)

• Efforts to promote caviar consumption and production ($300,000)

• Robotic squirrel named “RoboSquirrel” (part of a $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation)

• Promotion of specialty shampoo and other beauty products for cats and dogs ($505,000)

• Corporate welfare for the world’s largest snack food producer, PepsiCo Inc. ($1.3 million)

• Government-funded study on how golfers might benefit from using their imagination, envisioning the hole is bigger than it actually is ($350,000)

• “Prom Week,” a video game that allows taxpayers to relive prom night ($516,000)

• Oklahoma’s layover boondoggle, a scarcely used airport in Oklahoma receiving nearly half-a-million in taxpayer dollars only to transfer funds elsewhere in the state ($450,000)

• The 2012 Alabama Watermelon Queen tour paid for in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “to promote the consumption of Alabama’s watermelon through appearances of the Alabama Watermelon Queen at various events and locations” ($25,000)