When President Obama took office in 2009, our national debt was $10.63 trillion. Today, it approaches near $20 trillion. The already colossal number has nearly doubled under the Obama administration. As Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla. (C, 71%) points out, even “if Congress were able to balance the budget, keep it balanced, and create a yearly surplus of $50 billion, it would still take 460 years to pay off our national debt.” Think about that.

And where has your money gone? In his office’s “Federal Fumbles” report, a project to identify the most ridiculous examples of federal waste, Sen. Lankford shows that the Obama administration has wasted your tax dollars on some pretty egregious things in the past few years.

Here are but five of the most ridiculous, wasteful projects your tax dollars have funded:

1. Icelandic Grave Diggers:

The National Science Foundation has bankrolled nearly $500,000 in grants to study the connection between religion and political power in Iceland from 870 A.D. to 1300 A.D. by looking at church graveyards. The NSF also funded two other grants of $46,688 and $26,680 to determine where archeologists should dig for the graveyard study.

2. Really old Tanzanian fish bones

Nearly $200,000 of your tax dollars are funding an NSF study on “Fish as a delicacy and a staple: Social status and the daily meal at the 14th- to 16th-century town of Songo Mnara, Tanzania.” The study will be conducted over several years to determine what “constructions of meaning” the eating of fish had on society in the African nation of Tanzania 600 years ago.

3. Embroidered Snuggies

The waste of nearly $2 million by the University of Washington is another profligate example of NSF grants gone wrong. The NSF gave the University of Washington a few million dollars in grant money, and about $1.8 million of that was used to pay extremely high salaries to senior employees. $3,920 was spent on swag, including “custom Snuggies, canvas bags, and mini optical computer mice.” The university also spent an additional $1,179 of NSF grant money on embroidered Snuggies. The National Science Foundation, wasted grant money — are you starting to see a trend here?

4. How does that ruling make you feel?

The NSF is dedicating $120,703 in grant money to a study of 1,000 people, “half of whom will be impacted by a Supreme Court decision, the other half of whom could possibly feel indirectly impacted by a decision.” The study seeks to gauge the “psychological impacts” of Supreme Court rulings. Apart from being a complete waste of money, the potential premise of this sort of study is problematic, as it perfectly jibes with the endless insanity seen on college campuses these days. The law is concerned with justice, not feelings.

5. How do you like your salmonella?

In 2010, salmonella-contaminated eggs sickened 2,000 people because the Department of Agriculture did not alert the FDA about the infected eggs, which entered into the American food supply as a result. Instead of learning from that fiasco, the communication between the two agencies has not improved. In June 2016, the Health and Human Services inspector general determined that the FDA still didn’t have an effective food recall program that would prevent another health outbreak from happening. Sadly, the whole point of the FDA and USDA, and their respectively massive workforce and budgets, is to prevent these exact types of outbreaks from ever occurring. What exactly are the employees doing every day?

So, how does all this waste of your tax dollars make you feel?

The good news is that Sen. Lankford offers two ways to combat wasteful government spending in the “Federal Fumbles” booklet. The Taxpayers Right-to-Know Act, which has passed the House, would allow taxpayers to see what all federal agencies are spending and how the agencies gauge the effectiveness of their programs. The bill awaits consideration in the Senate.

There is also the Grant Reform and New Transparency (GRANT) Act, which would establish a new system for how grants are awarded to stop wasteful grant spending. So far it’s up for consideration in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee.

Hopefully with Donald Trump as president, both of these bills will get passed by Congress next year and signed into law so that the spigot of wasteful grant spending is stopped. (For more from the author of “Money to Burn: 5 Things You Won’t Believe the Feds Are Doing With Your Tax Dollars” please click HERE)

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