Announcing the 100 Most STUPID Stimulus Programs ($1.7 Billion Wasted -Full Report Embedded)

Monkeys on cocaine. New windows for the closed Mount Saint Helen's visitor's center. Modern dance as a tool for software development and a study of exotic ants, those are among the new list of really stupid stimulus projects released today Sens. Tom Coburn and John McCain (full list embedded below).

Titled "Summertime Blues," the report is the third by the two senators targeting projects which fail to meet the job-creation goal of spending under the $862 Billion dollar Recovery Act of 2009.

The report highlights the extraordinary "waste and mismanagement" of taxpayer dollars, said McCain, R-Arizona. The stimulus plan "was supposed to create jobs. It does not."


The "American people have awakened to the incompetency of Washington," declared Coburn, R-Oklahoma. "The rest of the federal government is filled with stuff just like this."

The previous report released in December included fun items such as $5 Million for energy efficiency upgrades to a mall which has almost no stores, and $133 million to renovate a federal office building which could be totally rebuilt for about the same amount of money.


Some of my personal favorites among the items the Senators reported today include:

• Number 9--Oklahoma town uses $89,000 to replace brand new sidewalks with brand newer sidewalks--the sidewalks lead to a big hole.

• Number 23-- $200,000 to help Siberians to lobby the Russian government.

• Number 28 -- $71,623 to researchers at Wake Forest University to see how monkeys react under the effects of cocaine. 

• Number 36--$712,000 to help scientists create a Joke machine.

I think the real joke machine is the waste of $862 Billion dollars. Read the entire report below:



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