The government has funded experiments that force ferrets to binge drink and dose dogs with cocaine.
Those are some of the highlights of Sen. Rand Paul’s Festivus report released Tuesday.
The Kentucky Republican uses the faux annual holiday to air his spending grievances and highlight examples of government waste, which his report says totaled more than $1.6 trillion when counting interest payments on the 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 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 year after year — and this holiday season will be no different,” said Mr. Paul, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“So, before we get to the Feats of Strength, it’s time for my Airing of (Spending) Grievances,” he said, referring to the Festivus traditions popularized by the 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld.”
The bulk of the federal spending Mr. Paul refers to as waste is the record $1.2 trillion in interest payments the Treasury made this year on the government’s $38.4 trillion debt.
That makes interest the third largest government expense after Social Security and Medicare.
“The government refuses to balance its budget, and taxpayers are stuck picking up the trillion-dollar tab,” the report said.
The more than $400 billion in 2025 wasteful spending outside of interest payments on the debt included hundreds of millions spent on gain-of-function research laboratory experiments on dogs, monkeys and rats.
“That includes over $13.8 million on beagle experiments, $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a ’Price Is Right’-inspired video game, and so much more,” Mr. Paul said in his introduction to the report.
He credited White Coat Waste, a nonprofit watchdog organization that wants to end government-funded animal testing, with helping identify those and other expenses.
The $13.8 million for beagle experiments refers to 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 expose 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, White Coat Waste’s research has found.
Their group also helped identify an ongoing $5.2 million project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in which beagles are dosed with cocaine and methamphetamine.
“The National Science Foundation and other agencies also monkied around with your tax dollars,” Mr. Paul said in the report, using a pun to highlight $14 million in federal grants for “inhumane research” involving monkeys.
Researchers at Brown University track monkeys’ brain activity and eye movements as they play a video game called “Planko,” a variation of the famous “Price is Right” game.
“The monkeys have ‘headposts’ screwed into their skulls to keep their heads still while they played the game,” the report said.
The Department of Veterans approved a $1 million project in which teenage ferrets are forced to binge alcohol for up to 90 days before they are killed.
“The researchers claim the goal of this drunken ferret experiment is to ‘pave the way’ 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, Schizophrenia, Suicide and Sensory processing,’” the report said.
Justin Goodman, senior vice president at White Coat Waste, said the group is proud that Mr. Paul continues to include its research on wasteful government animal tests.
“Sen. Paul’s Festivus report doesn’t just document waste, it helps decimate it,” he said. “Last year’s installment included WCW’s exposé of a $10 million Pentagon contract for cat constipation experiments that was soon canceled by the Trump administration. Sen. Paul has been leading the way to get the feds out of the $20 billion animal testing business before it was cool. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
Mr. Paul’s report highlights other research not involving animals that he deems wasteful.
For example, he cites 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.
“Perhaps we don’t need a multimillion-dollar rave reconnaissance mission to confirm that nightclub drugs are, in fact … drugs,” Mr. Paul said.
HHS is also giving $2.9 million to the University of Michigan to “investigate a mystery that has baffled absolutely no one: whether toddlers spending all day on iPads might affect their development,” he said.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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