"You Can't Make This Stuff Up": Rand Paul Continues Listing Wasteful Government Spending

kentucky a group of us chose to filibuster this bill because we think it wastes money we think it gives money to one of the most wasteful agencies in government the national science foundation since the early 1970s and since william proxmeyer began giving the golden fleece award for 50 years there have been a recurrence of waste from the national science foundation from nih and from even the state department we discussed earlier some of these and i have a handful of more that i think the american people should know about where their money's going to so the nih spent two million dollars in research to see if using a hot tub can lower stress really i think we probably could have just agreed to that but no we had to spend two million dollars to study if you're soaking in a hot tub whether that helps to relieve your stress now the nih also spent about a million dollars to see if they could help people overcome their fear of dentists really nih spent almost seven million dollars of cancer research money to create an automatically flushing smart toilet that's right seven million dollars for a automatically flushing toilet and here's the bonus the toilet will actually take pictures of your derriere from the inside of the toilet bowl should you wish to have those for posterity seven million dollars for a smart toilet how does this go on and nobody does anything you know what we do we flush more money down this smart toilet we give them more money and nobody bats an eye this is the problem of government nobody denies the waste nobody denies the ridiculous projects that are being funded and yet year in year out it continues we need to reform the process we need to have a taxpayer advocate on the committee that votes on the projects we need to have somebody with a grain of salt that is voting on these projects somebody who says that studying whether humans will eat ants to curb global warming whether that's a useful you know expenditure of three million dollars to study whether or not humans will eat enough ants to keep the globe from warming this goes on and the people at home are like how could this happen how could you spend money on this but it happens year in year out because we never vote for less money it's always more so a group of the senators here today are filibustering this bill because somebody's got to point out that the waste the waste and abuse of money goes on the national science foundation the king of wasteful spending spent a hundred thousand dollars to teach social scientists how to apply for grants so it's not bad enough that we're just you know handed out money like it you know grows on trees but we've got to teach people how to get more of the free money there actually was another case of money that went to central american countries trying to teach them how to get more of our money really we're actually teaching foreigners how to apply to get grant money from our government that's 28 trillion dollars in the whole we're annually a trillion dollars in the whole last couple years we're three to four trillion because of all these coveted bailouts and all this crazy government run amok and at the same time we're two three trillion dollars in the whole year we're sending a hundred thousand dollars to teach people how to get more grants the usaid spent 48 million dollars helping disconnected tunisian youth to not feel like you know they are a problem to society to help them cope with modern society well look coping is not easy for young people anywhere around the world but i guarantee 48 million dollars that we don't have that we have to borrow from china to send to tunisia is not a good expenditure of money probably helped no one probably enrich some contractors somewhere somebody steals some off the top there's always little skimming operation it was once estimated that as much as half to 70 of foreign aid was skimmed off the top either by corrupt dictators in the countries receiving the money or simply by graft throughout the government in these countries that we send the money to often the foreign aid money was going to countries with people who had dictators for 20 30 40 years and we were giving money to dictators national science foundation spent 4.6 million dollars to study the connection between getting drunk and falling down now you'd think that would be obvious you get drunk you fall down but no we had to go ahead and study whether getting drunk and falling down was something that happens we spent four million dollars if you get drunk will you fall down this is insane not one person a few of us but not a majority will stand up and say enough's enough the nsf needs less money not more the nih spent 36 million dollars to research why stress makes hair turn gray i'm at the age i need to know that one i mean why does stress make your hair turn gray really nobody would pay for this if we got a hundred assembled americans and said vote on whether or not you should spend 36 million dollars studying why your hair turns gray not one rational common sense america would vote for this and yet this congress is going to increase the budget of the national science foundation by 68 percent the national science foundation spent 2.5 million to research the effects of daydreaming i'm not kidding you're not okay you can't make this stuff up and so what are we gonna do increase their budget 29 billion dollars in more money for the national science foundation they ought to be ashamed one side of the aisle doesn't give a fig how much we're spending but the other side of the aisle the owl that i reside on on the right pretends to care about the debt and yet they the majority of them will vote for this monstrous bill the national science foundation used 1.5 million dollars to study how to make tomatoes taste better they spent a lot of money they spent a lot of times they wrote up their report and this is this is shocking this is groundbreaking research they found that if you add sugar to tomatoes they taste better you can't make this stuff up but it goes on and on and on i'm glad to be joined on the floor by the senator from utah and i will reserve the remainder of my time and pass the baton

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 471,964

Keywords: Sen. Rand Paul, NIH, taxpayer money

Id: W-wFwESIAK0

Length: 7min 16sec (436 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021