Staff Reports
Congress has once again proven that when it comes to spending, there seems to be no bottom to the swamp. A staggering 6,000-page budget bill has been dropped on lawmakers’ desks, chock-full of earmarks, bloated appropriations, and bizarre studies that leave taxpayers wondering if Washington has completely lost its grip on reality. The sheer size of the bill all but guarantees that most representatives won’t read it before casting their votes, yet it will lock in billions of dollars of wasteful spending at a time when Americans are fighting to make ends meet.
One of the headline allocations is $7 billion for the National Science Foundation. While Republicans point out this is technically a cut from last year’s levels, it’s still hard to stomach when everyday Americans are dealing with soaring grocery prices, crippling energy bills, and mounting national debt. If billions can be casually tossed at bureaucracy while nothing is done to rein in open borders, restore law and order, or refocus foreign aid, the problem isn’t the size of government—it’s the reckless priorities of those running it.
Buried in the mountain of paperwork are absurd examples of taxpayer-funded nonsense. Half a million dollars are going toward studying how much oxygen a fish consumes when it’s out of water—spoiler alert, not much. Three million dollars have been earmarked to explore why the “Jaws” movie soundtrack scares people, as if that mystery hasn’t been solved since John Williams composed it. Even more laughable, $600,000 will be wasted on researching the “poo fighting abilities” of chimpanzees and concluding that they are largely right-handed. This is not fiscal responsibility; it’s Washington indulging its obsession with nonsense while the nation sinks deeper into debt.
But perhaps the most disturbing example is $75,000 earmarked to analyze teenage consumption of adult content since the pandemic. At a time when families are pleading for help to protect kids from online exploitation and schools are failing in their mission to educate, who in their right mind prioritizes taxpayer dollars to study something the private sector is perfectly capable of tracking? This isn’t governance—it’s ideology and academic busywork masked as research. It shows how detached Washington has become from the crises parents and communities face every day.
Voices like Carl Higbie’s have rightly called out these spending fiascos as proof that Congress is more beholden to lobbyists, academic elites, and bureaucrats than to the American people. Instead of cutting waste and focusing on real priorities—securing the border, reducing inflation, rebuilding American energy independence—politicians on Capitol Hill are content to blow through taxpayer dollars like Monopoly money. If Americans don’t demand accountability and courage from their leaders, the swamp will continue to grow, burying us under trillions in debt and 6,000 pages of government-approved nonsense.
