A million dollars is nothing
nowadays. Just ask the Pentagon, which
spent $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and
Afghanistan over the last decade, or the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, which spent more than $240 million on
erection-enhancing penis pumps over the same time period. But the
government does even stupider things with smaller amounts of money.
Like dumping $800,000 into an IHOP franchise for D.C.
residents. 

Such frivolity but might not spell the death of the republic,
but it’s nevertheless a sign of government self-indulgence. In
Wastebook: A Guide to Some of the Most Wasteful and Low
Priority Government Spending of 2011, Sen. Tom Coburn
(R-Okla.) lists some of the cheaper but no less wasteful
projects currently being funded by the federal
government. “As you look at these examples,” writes
Coburn, “regardless of your personal political persuasion, ask
yourself: Would you agree with Washington these represent
national priorities or would you agree these reflect the
wasteful spending habits that threaten to bankrupt the future
of the American Dream?”

Let’s run down the list, shall we? 

• Republican and Democratic Party conventions: $17.7
  million (each) 
• A mango-production program for Pakistani farmers that was
  abandoned after one year and caused many farmers to default on
  loans taken out in anticipation of increased productivity:
  $30 million 
• A project to convert three Air Force radar stations from diesel
  to wind energy that has since been abandoned: $14
  million
• The construction of an IHOP in the up-and-coming neighborhood
  of Columbia Heights (which Coburn refers to as “pancakes for
  yuppies”): $800,000
• A promotional video for an Alaskan bridge that very well might
  not get built, titled ‘The Knik Arm Crossing, Bridge to Our
  Future”: $57,390 (out of $15.3 million spent this year on
  the bridge) 
• Pension payments to dead federal employees: $120
  million
• A fourth visitors center on the 54-mile Talimena Scenic Drive
  that runs between Talihina, Oklahoma (Pop. 2,522) to Mena, Arkansas
  (Pop. 5,637): $529,689
• Funding for video game preservation at the International Center
  for the History of Electronic Games: $100,000
• Aid to China, the U.S.’s biggest lender, for social and
  environmental programs: $17.8 million
• Seed money for the “drug-themed” Mellow Mushroom Pizza Bakery
  in Austin: $484,000
• “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”:
  $100,000
• Funding for Pakistan’s Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop to create
  “130 episodes of an indigenously produced Sesame Street“:
  $10 million 
• Research funding for the American Museum of Magic to “better
  understand its various audiences and their potential interest
  in the history of magic entertainment”:
  $147,138
• Energy efficient home improvement tax credits for children,
  prisoners, and other people who do not own homes: $1
  billion
• Research funding for a study to determine if cocaine makes
  Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior:
  $175,587

The list goes
on and on.