A new report on wasteful government spending is ridiculing $49 million spent by the National Guard on professional sports advertising and $50,000 on researching the bomb-detecting skills of elephants as partial evidence of too-lax congressional oversight.
The report released Thursday by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, lists $1.1 billion in "questionable Washington spending habits" and another $294 billion in spending that has not received proper authorization from lawmakers.
The work is a nod to the annual waste reports offered by former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who retired last year. His reports drew headlines and controversy after every release, sparking contempt from fiscal conservatives who saw many of the highlighted projects as proof that federal spending should be severely curtailed.
McCain said he hopes the new report will serve as a "wake-up call" to lawmakers. "At a time when Americans' disapproval of government is at an all-time high, it has never been more important to reign-in spending and put our fiscal house back in order."
The $49 million in professional sports spending by the National Guard came largely from sponsorship of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s NASCAR team and Graham Rahal's Indy Racing League team. Both deals have since ended.
McCain's report notes that the sponsorships could have been better used to cover a $101 million shortfall in Guard pay accounts, which threatened training last fall.
The elephant research project has been cited often by McCain in recent months as a typical government boondoggle. The 2012 award from the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command was used to work with the South African firm Adventures with Elephants to investigate anecdotal reports of the sensitivity of the animals' noses.
"While finding new ways to enhance our bomb detection methods is important, it is unlikely that African elephants could feasibly be used on the battlefield given their size and sensitive status as 'threatened' under the Endangered Species Act," the report states.
The $294 billion in unauthorized programs include a host of small-business initiatives for veterans among 260 other federal programs. The report does not question the value of those programs but does question the lack of appropriate oversight and review of them, something for which the Congressional Budget Office chastised lawmakers earlier this year.
The report also calls out federal officials for approving $14 million for "a duplicative catfish inspection office," $391,000 for a National Institutes of Health dog bite prevention website, and $15,000 for an Environmental Protection Agency study into pollution from backyard barbecues.
McCain called the effort the first in a series of reports on government waste to be released this year, including one specifically on questionable Pentagon priorities.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
