$180K to study freezing rat sperm & 99 other stimulus wastes

This is #95 on the list. Plese click on the link below and you can see just 100 that they have found as waste so far. These are not considered job producers and they are a perfect example why we should not give the government any more money. All they know how to do is waste.

http://coburn.senate.gov/public//index. ... dium=email

$89,000 to fix a sidewalk that leads to a ditch.

$1.9 million for international 'ant' research

$712,000 to help create a 'joke machine'! Are you kidding? Couldn't they have just saved the money and read this stimulus bill? Or watched a clip of Biden speaking? Or played back all of Obama's promises? That is enough to make anyone laugh for days!

$1.9 million for international 'ant' research

Hey, that one was for me, damn ants all over the house. Don't worry, I'm spending the money wisely.

$141,000 to study Dinosaur eggs in China

$185,000 to help Siberians learn how to lobby the American government.

And of course we can't forget the $20 million used to put up signs to boost Obama's ego and let people know that there money is being spent......on those signs.

Love this one too.

$144,451 to study how monkeys react when on Cocaine. I guess you can file that one under 'actual stimulus'.

THIS is why we all wanted them to read this bill before passing it and why we also wanted to be able to read it. Why couldn't they have taken out all of this crap?

You are exactly right on this.....the congress has been doing this for years and has no idea how to stop. Please don't make this into a liberal/conservative issue because many of the projects listed are in firmly Republican states (Kentucky, Ok, etc). Sometimes I think they just can't help themselves, they will stick their earmarks into every piece of legislation that comes along.....

If you think replacing democrats with republicans ( or vice versa for that matter) will change the behavior you are in for a huge disappointment. Every senator/congressperson goes into office with their own pet projects to bring money to their state, no matter the value of the earmark.

archer wrote: You are exactly right on this.....the congress has been doing this for years and has no idea how to stop. Please don't make this into a liberal/conservative issue because many of the projects listed are in firmly Republican states (Kentucky, Ok, etc). Sometimes I think they just can't help themselves, they will stick their earmarks into every piece of legislation that comes along.....

If you think replacing democrats with republicans ( or vice versa for that matter) will change the behavior you are in for a huge disappointment. Every senator/congressperson goes into office with their own pet projects to bring money to their state, no matter the value of the earmark.

I agree and I said in my first post that it is the Government. But we have never had bills of this magnatude with this much overall waste before this administration. With thousands of pages and no one even reads what they are voting on. This needs to end with both parties. That is why I wanted that bill to pass that the Republicans presented, where it said that you must read the entire bill before voting on it. They had no idea what was in here. Normally bills are a few hundred pages at most with dozens of crappy deals snuck into it. Not hundreds or thousands of wasteful projects like it is now a days. No longer can any congress just vote on a bill without knowing what is in it. This is total BS! It is our money and they vote on in like they are voting on what kind of sandwich they should order for lunch. Like it is no big deal what is in it.

No doubt some of these projects would be money better spent elsewhere (or not spent at all) but keep in mind that many such lists have appeared over the years and very often it turns out that some of the really outlandish sounding projects are actually important but are made to sound silly by whomever is coming up with the list.

No doubt "ant studies" sounds stupid at first blush but insects cause billions of dollars of damage a year and studying them has helped stop some of that loss. I'm not sure that was the purpose of that study but I'm just trying to point out that what seems like a total waste of money when taken out of context can actually be something that saves a lot of money from learning more about a problem.