9 Eye-Opening Examples of ‘Waste Spending’ From Rand Paul's $1.6 Trillion ‘Festivus’ Report
Facts Matter
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the past 11 years, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has released his annual “Festivus Report” to air grievances. While the name is a reference to a Seinfeld episode, the report itself is legitimate, detailing what he believes were some of the most egregious examples of the federal government wasting our tax dollars in the previous year.
Since the start of the report, the dollar amount of the government “waste” he cites has grown significantly.
In 2015, it was a little over a billion dollars. By 2019, it was $50 billion dollars. The latest report for 2025 showed that the figure hit a cool $1.639 trillion dollars. It’s worth mentioning that a huge portion of that total comes from interest payments on the national debt, which Senator Paul now includes in his overall tally. U.S. taxpayers paid $1.22 trillion dollars in interest just to service the national debt last year. That is significantly more than the Pentagon’s entire budget—and given the fact that that money is literally going to nothing other than interest, there’s a good case to be made to include that figure in the overall wasted spending report.
Setting the interest payments aside, let’s go through nine of the most interesting examples of government waste from the report.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | For the past 11 years now, you had Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky release what he calls his annual |
| 0:06.1 | Festivist report to air out grievances. Now, that name is a reference to a Seinfeld episode, |
| 0:11.6 | but the report itself is very much legitimate, and it basically details what Senator Paul |
| 0:16.7 | believes are some of the most egregious examples of the federal government wasting our tax |
| 0:21.4 | dollars in the prior calendar year. And over the past 11 years, the dollar amount of the government |
| 0:28.4 | waste that he cites in his report has really grown significantly. Back in 2015, it was a little |
| 0:34.9 | over a billion dollars. By 2019, it was over $50 billion, and the latest |
| 0:39.8 | report, the one from 2025, was a cool $1.639 trillion. Now, it is worth mentioning that a huge |
| 0:46.7 | portion of that actually comes from the interest payments on our national debt, which Senator Rand |
| 0:51.5 | Paul now includes in his overall total. |
| 1:03.0 | And just for your reference, U.S. taxpayers paid a cool $1.22 trillion in interest just to service the national debt last year. |
| 1:05.8 | That is significantly more than the entire military budget. |
| 1:17.1 | And given the fact that that money really does go to nothing, literally nothing else other than the interest, there is a good case to be made to include it in the overall figure of wasted government spending. |
| 1:23.3 | However, setting the interest payments aside, today let's go through the nine most interesting. |
| 1:25.5 | And I don't know what would you call it. |
| 1:28.3 | Eye-opening examples of government waste from the latest 2025 report. And as always, if you appreciate content like this, please do smash those |
| 1:33.6 | like and subscribe buttons so that the YouTube algorithm can pick up this episode and share it to |
| 1:37.9 | ever more people. Now getting back to the report, let's start this way. You might remember how a |
| 1:42.6 | few years ago certain NIH experiments |
| 1:45.1 | with Beagles came to light. The cruelty of those experiments really made them front page news |
| 1:51.1 | because they involved locking dogs' heads into these mesh cages that were then filled with |
| 1:56.7 | hundreds of infected sandflies. The screaming from the dogs was so intense that the researchers |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Epoch Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Epoch Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.