Ben Ferguson (3:33)
You're listening to the 40 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Good Wednesday morning. It's Christmas Eve and it's so nice to have you with us on the 47 Morning Update. And we've got one big story for you. It is the festivus of waste, fraud and abuse with your tax dollars. Just how bad was the waste this past year? You're going to be livid after I tell you where your money went and who got it. But first, I want to tell you about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. Every so often, something happens that reminds us just how fragile our freedoms are. We can't afford to take our rights for granted. We must draw a line in the sand. And our friends at Patriot Mobile have been doing just that for more than 12 years. The truth is, there is only one provider that boldly stands in the gap for Americans who believe freedom is worth fighting for, and that company is Patriot Mobile. Not only are they leading the red economy, they're also outpacing the competition in technology. 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That's patriotmobile.com BEN47 or 972-patriot and make the switch today. It's the 47 Morning Update and it starts right now. Story number President Trump ran on getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse within our government. It's something that we know has been rampant for quite some time, but we're finally starting to witness some of that wastefront abuse disappear. We know a lot of it was done when Doge was started with Elon Musk being in charge. But the journey is still a big one. The battle is still an uphill battle. And the government we now are learning has funded a lot of things that are going to make you want to beat your head against the wall. The government has ex has funded experiments that dose dogs with cocaine. You're paying for that. Also, your tax hours are paying to force ferrets to binge drink. Those are just some of the highlights coming out from Senator Rand Paul's Festivus Report, released by the end of the year. He wants you to know every year what your dollars have been going for. The Kentucky Republican uses his annual holiday report to air the grievances and highlight examples of massive government waste, which his reports say totaled more than 1.6 trillion. When counting the interest payments on debt, the 2025 report cites examples ranging from the Department of Health and Human Services paying social media influencers a collective $40 million to promote COVID 19 vaccination for racial and ethnic minority groups to the state department spending 1.5 million to boost American films, television shows, and, I'm not joking, video games abroad. No matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can't help but demand more Fiscal responsibility May not be the most crowded road, but it's one I've walked for years and years. And this holiday season will be no different. That's what Senator Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said in a statement. He said so before we go to the feats of strength, it's time for my airing of spending grievances, referring to the festivus tradition, popularized in the 1990 sitcom Seinfeld. The bulk of the federal spending Mr. Paul refers to as waste is the record and this should make every American Beyond Angry. $1.2 trillion that we spent in interest payments this year on the government's $38.4 trillion debt. So 1.4 trillion of the money that was spent this year just went to interest. That makes interest and this is how out of control our government spending and borrowing has become the third largest government expense only after Social Security and Medicare. Again, something that should make you very, very, very angry now, he said. The government refuses to balance its budget and taxpayers are stuck picking up the trillion dollar tab annually. The more than 400 billion in the 2025 wasteful spending outline of interest payments on the debt included hundreds of millions spent on gain of function research, laboratory experiments on dogs, monkeys and rats. Something we know was a disaster with a COVID 19 vaccine. Something that Dr. Anthony Fauci is accused of lying to Congress on the issue of gain of function research. He went on to say that includes more than 13.8 million that we spent alone on Beagle experiments. $14,683,280 to make monkeys play a Price is Right inspired video game. Again, almost 15 million just for that and so much more. He credited White Coat Waste, a nonprofit watchdog organization that once end government funded animal testing, with helping identify those and other expenses. Again, bipartisanship is a good thing. The 13.8 million for Beagle experiments refers to the ongoing National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant funding for the University of Missouri, Columbia that was first approved during Anthony Fauci's tenure. The experiments exposed hundreds of beagles as young as 4 months old to ticks to infect the dogs with illnesses like Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The dogs are intentionally denied pain relief so that it does not interact with the infection or experimental vaccines. That is what White Coast Waste Research has found. The group also identified an ongoing $5.2 million project funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, in which beagles are dosed with cocaine and methamphetamines. The National Science foundation other agencies also monkeyed around with your tax dollars, Paul wrote in the report, using a pun to highlight the 14 million in federal grants for inhumane research involving the monkeys, he says. Researchers at Brown University track the monkey's brain activity and eye movements as they play a video game called Plinko, a variation of the famous Price is Right game. The monkeys have head posts screwed into their skulls to keep their heads still while they play the game. The report also says the Department of Veterans, by the way, approved a $1 million project in which teenage ferrets are forced to binge drink alcohol for up to 90 days before they're killed. That sounds exciting. The researchers claim the goal of the drunken ferrets experiment, which you're paying for, is it paved the way, quote unquote, for teenage ferrets to be used to test chemical weapons, opioids, extreme stress and tbi, traumatic brain injuries, or to conduct studies related to depression, stress responses, addiction, addiction, schizophrenia, suicide and sensory processing. The report, the report states Justin Goodman, by the way, the senior vice president at White Coat Waste, said the group is proud that Mr. Paul continues to include research on wasteful government spending and wasteful government animal tests as well. Now, this is just some of what we found out, but there's even more. I'll give you another example of some of the shock and where your money is also going. Uh, not only do we spend 1.5 million for the HHS spending on celebrity influencers to discourage the drug use, right? That's one of your tax dollars. But 1.9 million we also spent for mobile phone intervention for childhood obesity, Latino families specifically. That was where your tax hours went. 1.9 million for that. We also know that there was 244,000 funding for a Pakistani children's climate cartoon. So we're still paying for cartoons to be created in places like Pakistan. 1.5 million promotion of US and media films overseas. 2.5 million for the National Science foundation fund to promote insect consumption. So we're now paying two and a half million for you to eat bugs. A million and a half for an influencer led anti drug TikTok campaign. 40 million for COVID vaccine promotion after the pandemic had already ended. Let me say that again. Your tax hours. This year we spent 40 million to promote the COVID vaccine even after the pandemic had ended. 20 million controversial experiment involving all the ferrets, the dogs, the monkeys I mentioned a moment ago. 3.3 million for anti racism campus program at Northwestern University. 3.3 million of your tax hours for that. 7.5 billion with a B allocated to EV infrastructure, electric vehicle infrastructure. But only 68 charging stations have been built. So we spent 8.5, or excuse me, 7.5 billion on 65 charging stations. Again, another example of the corruption in our government. Another 22.6 not million, but billion spending on migrant benefits. So if you want to know what illegal immigrants are costing you, at the bare minimum, 22.6 billion, which we had to borrow the money. And now once we borrow the money, now we're spending that over trillion dollars a year on interest payments alone. Now the report also combines government spending deemed wasteful with categories some may view as improper. Insufficient efficient is what the left says about this. They say, well, you know, there's a lot here that, that you don't understand. Right. All right, well let's, let's go to this another example. The Department of Health and Human services approving a $2.1 million four year project where New York University researchers plan to camp outside EDM Festivals to collect saliva samples to test for over 1,000 drugs. Quote, perhaps we don't need a multimillion dollar rave reconnaissance mission to confirm that nightclub drugs are in fact drugs is what was said by Senator Paul. HHS is also giving 2.9 million to the University of Michigan to investigate a mystery that had baffled absolutely no one whether toddlers spending all day on iPads might affect their development. Now these are just some of the highlights of your tax dollars, waste, fraud and abuse being brought to light. The question now is how do we get rid of it and what does the President plan to do on that issue? Thank you for listening to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson. Please make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And for more in depth news, also subscribe to the Ben Ferguson podcast and we will see you back here. Tomorrow.
