Since the start of 2023, this small clique of eight far-Left socialists have managed to tack $224 million worth of pet projects onto the spending bills meant to fund core government operations.

One doesn’t need three guesses to start landing on some of the themes addressed repeatedly by their pork-barrel spending. The list includes advancing “environmental justice,” spreading so-called “equity,” aiding illegal immigrants and salvaging bits of the unpopular “Green New Deal” championed by Squad-leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-N.Y.).

These are the priorities of a new kind of progressivism – neo-Marxism, really – that has grabbed hold of the Democratic Party’s bullhorn. But every dime of it has been aided and abetted by Republicans.

Earmarks had been banned for a decade before the House GOP held a secret vote to join Democrats and reinstate the practice three years ago.

Since then, billions have flowed to vanity projects, frivolous or downright silly projects, employers of spouses, and items that should be funded at the state or local levels where officials better understand the community’s needs.

The late Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) called earmarks the “currency of corruption” for a reason – the projects are too often self-interested, self-aggrandizing, wasteful, or all three.

It’s bipartisan corruption that’s spending America straight into bankruptcy.

Last year’s spending bill was proof: our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, an organization I founded and lead, found $16 billion worth of earmarks in the $1.7 trillion fiscal 2023 year-end omnibus bill, and seven of the top 10 biggest earmark culprits were Republicans.

This year, it was $15.7 billion across 8,051 earmarks in two “minibus” measures in March 2024.

But in order for a Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) to stuff $50 million into the University of Alabama’s endowment fund (a university that hosts his Senate archive), we also get gems like these from Squad members:

• $1 million to build “a network of intergenerational, trauma-informed waterfront green spaces,” won by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). The project had previously won $792,000 more in a 2022 earmark. Do we ask the obvious? How exactly does trauma dictate a park design?
• $1 million for the San Antonio College Empowerment Center, which runs an Undocumented Student Support Program to help immigrants enroll in the school. The sponsor is Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who is closer to the illegal immigration crisis than most, but wants to create a college education magnet for them.
• $850,000 to create jobs and affordable housing near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, won by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). The square was reportedly a “no-go” zone for police amid the riots following Floyd’s death. Now, Omar saysthat “added to the stress faced by the community and increased the need for support and stability in housing and commerce.” In other words, federal taxpayers need to step in and clean up the damage.

Following last week’s 2 a.m. passage of the final six spending bills for this year, the Squad’s total ticked up from $218 million to $224.1 million—all borrowed against our enormous national debt. The two “minibus” packages this month alone contained 215 earmarks from these eight individuals.

In a constant cycle of crises and 11th-hour, late-night votes, a perverse Mary Poppins method of governing has taken hold again. A spoonful of corrupt sugar (earmarks) makes the medicine – massive, wasteful trillion-dollar spending bills – go down.

There’s just one problem. We can’t afford more spending with the national debt exceeding $34 trillion. Instead, we need a bold plan to stop Congress from bankrupting this country.

We can start with banning earmarks. This election year, Americans deserve to know whether their members support earmarks. Let’s see who’s in or who’s out on earmarks.

Congressional leaders need to give taxpayers the courtesy of a public vote on this madness.

Adam Andrzejewski is CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, the largest private database of public spending. The organization is running a petition to demand an up-or-down vote on earmarks.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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The audit examined costs incurred in 2018 by Fermi Research Alliance LLC, the contractor that operates the Fermi National Accelerator Lab near Batavia, Illinois. The Energy Department owns the lab, which receives millions in funding from the federal government. The lab also received $260 million from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The inspector general’s audit found that costs claimed by the contractor were not always allowable or reasonable. The inspector general questioned $160 million in indirect costs as unsupported, $15 million in subcontract costs as unresolved (pending an audit), and $2.5 million as unsupported, unallowable, or unreasonable.

Specifically, the inspector general had many concerning findings. They include Fermi Research Alliance’s loss of over $2.4 million in vendor invoices, unreasonable subsistence reimbursements to visiting scientists and researchers in excess of $30,000, and excessive holiday pay exceeding $50,000. He also found that Fermi Research Alliance was not in compliance with federal cost-accounting standards.

The Energy Department’s inspector general concluded: “These issues could result in the department reimbursing [Fermi Research Alliance] for costs that were unallowable, not allocable, or unreasonable.”

This mismanagement directly impairs the Energy Department’s mission, the audit found, since these questionable expenditures could have gone toward further research efforts at the lab by purchasing more equipment or hiring more researchers.

The waste was completely preventable by enforcing accounting standards and frequently auditing to ensure they are met, the audit found, but instead lax oversight meant these issues went undiscovered for five years.

The Associated Press reported Oregon was “awash in treatment funds after decriminalizing drugs,” adding the state has allocated $265 million to recovery centers. The funding came from taxes levied on the sale of marijuana. Sadly, the rollout of these funds has been slow, with only $184 million distributed as of May 26.

Despite this massive funding, The Economist reported that “…help seems hard to come by.” The overdose death rate in Oregon almost doubled since 2019, twice the national average.

The New York Times has reported on the horrid conditions on the streets of Portland, including needles and humans feces littering the streets, drug addicts using drugs at all times of the day, and violent addicts in tents beating other homeless people with baseball bats.

One program that has been particularly costly and unsuccessful is the treatment hotline. Meant to be a resource for addicts to call for help after receiving a citation for using drugs, The Economist found that in its first two years of existence, fewer than 200 people called the hotline, and fewer than 40 callers were interested in treatment. That put its cost to taxpayers at $7,000 per call.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

The extensive report contains detailed financial information on the state of U.S. finances. There is a section titled “An Unsustainable Fiscal Path,” that explains that “a sustainable fiscal policy is defined as one where the ratio of debt held by the public to GDP (the debt-to-GDP ratio) is stable or declining over the long term.”

The U.S. has a rapidly-increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, along with ballooning mandatory spending on programs like Medicare and Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance, driving up costs without substantial increases in revenue. These programs are projected to be depleted by 2028 and 2035, respectively.

On the balance sheet, the report shows the U.S. has assets of $4.9 trillion, which include cash, monetary assets, inventory and property, and loans receivable. On the liabilities side, however, the U.S. has $39 trillion in liabilities, which include $24.3 trillion worth of federal debt and interest payable, $12.8 trillion in federal employee and veteran benefits payable, and $1.8 trillion in other liabilities.

This is only one of many measures that show how much financial trouble the U.S. is in, and more people from both sides of the aisle are beginning to issue dire warnings that our current spending habits need to drastically change.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Donald Trump issued 220 executive orders throughout his four-year presidency, while Barack Obama issued 276 over his eight years in the Oval Office, Fox News reported.

Most Biden’s orders came his first year, when he issued more than any president since the 1970s.

The budgetary impact analyses included with each order are vaguely worded and only show if the order will have no impact, increase or decrease federal costs, which makes it difficult to assign a specific dollar cost to each, Fox News noted.

But a recent Penn Wharton Budget Model shows the recent student loan forgiveness executive order alone could cost up to $1 trillion, up from the original estimated cost of $500 billion.

The Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Dickerson told Fox News that according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s earlier orders already cost taxpayers $500 billion.

“So, it could be up to $1.5 trillion in cost to taxpayers just on executive actions, not legislation going through Congress and being signed into law and being debated,” he said. “All of this new spending that the executive branch is doing, that Biden is doing, is by fiat.”

These executive orders could impact inflation.

More printed money flooding the economy, financed by the Federal Reserve, fuels inflation, Dickerson noted. The U.S. Army recently suggested that soldiers take advantage of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps.

Biden’s executive orders have expanded “the welfare state” and paid “people to stay out of the workforce,” Dickerson said. “So that’s only exacerbating the 3.3 million worker shortage that we see in the economy.”

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com