Sen. Jeff Flake Concludes That Federal Government Is Remarkably Efficient

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Sen. Jeff Flake, who has taken up the mantle of Sen. Tom Coburn, who in turn was taking up the mantle of William Proxmire’s infamous “Golden Fleece” award, has released the 2017 issue of Wastebook, documenting all the dumb ways the government is spending your hard-earned dollars. In keeping with tradition, it has a pun-heavy theme: this year it’s Porkémon Go—get it? Pork-émon!—which probably seemed pretty funny a few months ago. But popular fads are fickle things.

In any case, the bulk of the report is pretty typical. Flake is unhappy that President Obama wants money to fight Zika when he’s already squandering money on things that “most would consider obvious or even absurd”:

Researchers were literally playing with dolls to prove what every child already knows—girls are more likely to play with Barbie dolls than boys—with support from National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants totaling $300,000.

Studies on the habits of college students funded with $5 million of NIH grants found fraternity brothers drink, smoke and generally party more than other students. They also sleep in later, which led the researchers to speculate “one explanation for this finding is that Greeks students recognize their sleep needs.” Perhaps a more likely reason is that they are sleeping off their party lifestyle.

NIH is also drilling down to determine why some people are afraid of the dentist as part of another $3.5 million research project. The researchers found “fear of pain has been shown to be a critical component.”

Your mileage will vary on whether you find this hilarious or not, but it’s worth noting that even a dedicated investigator like Flake found only $5 billion in waste, of which $3 billion was for one project: the California bullet train. Now, I happen to agree with Flake that the train is a bad use of money, but it’s certainly not waste. The money is being used to build a train. Flake and I happen to think the train is a bad idea, but the definition of waste is not “stuff you and I don’t like.”

In any case, take out that one project and you’re left with $2 billion, which is something like 0.2 percent of the discretionary federal budget. That’s actually…not bad. I wish my own household ran that efficiently. It’s worth adding that of that $2 billion, about half seems to be legitimate waste1 while the other half is just sophomoric jeering at scientific studies that are perfectly reasonable but sound kind of funny. So the actual waste is probably closer to 0.1 percent of the budget.2

It kinda makes you wonder how much the US government spent researching and writing this report?

1This is just my horseback guess based on flipping through the report.

2This doesn’t matter, of course. What matters is that Flake has presented the right-wing media with a nice sourcebook of funny-sounding projects that they can recycle for the next 12 months as evidence of idiotic government spending. Someone should ask for federal funding for a project to track how many times Flake’s examples get recycled throughout the next year by Fox, Limbaugh, Drudge, etc.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate