Doggie Hamlet, Mouse Fight Club & a $666B Deficit: Why the Government Gets Coal for Christmas

WASHINGTON – As the Christmas season kicks off, a U.S. senator has found 473 billion reasons why the federal government deserves coal in its stocking.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., has released the third volume of his "Federal Fumbles" report. It finds $473.6 billion in wasteful and inefficient federal spending and takes a look at 100 ways he's found the federal government has dropped the ball.

For example, President Donald Trump made the line, "You're fired" famous on his television show "The Apprentice," but if you get fired by the federal government there's a good chance you can just as easily get rehired.

A 2014 inspector general report at the Department of Treasury found that from 2010 to 2013 the Internal Revenue Service hired more than 800 people who were previously fired due to "conduct or performance issues."

Fast-forward to this year and a new report shows it continues to happen.

Among this year's most eye opening discoveries:

• an $85 million loan to build a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan
• $2.6 million for research on how stickleback fish adapt to different environments
• $40,000 to study 60 Syrian refugees living in Iceland
• $30,000 grant to the National Education Association for a production of "Doggie Hamlet" in New Hampshire, a version of the classic play consisting of humans yelling or running toward confused sheep and dogs 

"Sen. Lankford's Federal Fumbles report is an essential playbook for ending reckless spending and increasing government's accountability to taxpayers who are being unwittingly forced to pay countless billions for wasteful projects including mouse fight clubs, breeding narcoleptic Dobermans and getting monkeys hooked on nicotine," says Anthony Bellotti, president and founder of White Coat Waste Project.

Also in the report: examples of government inefficiency and wrongdoing at taxpayers' expense.

Case in point – a recent inspector general report found the Department of Defense is unable to track down more than $1 billion in equipment purchased for Iraqi security forces from 2015 to 2016.

And with all the evidence of wasteful spending, Lankford pointed out how hurricane-damaged houses of worship can't get federal disaster help.

"FEMA does grant for disaster relief for all nonprofits except for houses of worship," Lankford told CBN News. "So if your church is damaged in a disaster, you can't get federal assistance like other nonprofits can get because FEMA specifically discriminates against houses of worship."

Lankford's report also details "touchdowns" or improvements from his previous reports. For instance, this year Congress has worked to roll back a number of Obama era regulations saving taxpayers $3.7 billion and American businesses more than $4.2 million hours of paperwork.

Lankford says the next challenge is fixing the chaotic budget process.
 
"This is an example of the problem, but the problem is a bigger issue and it's the process itself and how it comes together," says Lankford.

Congress has only stuck to their budget four times in the last 40 years – one of the main causes putting our national debt at over $20 trillion, and our 2017 deficit at $666 billion.

As Republicans move on tax reform, some lawmakers have expressed concern about what impact tax cuts could have on our national debt and deficit, but Lankford hopes cuts will boost the economy enough to offset the deficit.
 
"If you reduce taxes a little bit, it increases the economic health of the nation. That's a positive thing and it offsets," says Lankford. "My goal is to say we reduce taxes enough that we can still take care of debt and deficit but we also can help strengthen the economy."
 
Although many details of the tax plan are still being worked out, Lankford says he's confident meaningful tax reform will be in place by January first.