DOGE will begin to expose ‘dumb’ federal spending from costly soap dispensers to drag shows in South America

Musk and Ramaswamy are being asked to cut potentially a trillion or more dollars from the US government’s annual $6.75 trillion in spending and they will be looking at everything from over-priced soap dispensers for the US military to sponsoring drag shows in Ecuador, the Daily Mail is reporting.

Trump has compared DOGE to the Manhattan Project that created the world’s first atomic bomb. Except DOGE will be dismantling, not building. Musk has promised that he can find up to $1.9 trillion in government waste to cut. “We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars,” Musk posted on X. “This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which many Americans got to know just too well during the Covid pandemic, is home to some very questionable spending, including a $3 million study that injected hamsters with steroids in order to see “whether current drugs for aggressive youth suppress steroid-induced aggression,” the Daily Mail quoted a government report. Moving to larger mammals, the NIH spent an additional $2.3 million jabbing six-month-old beagle puppies with cocaine, and $1.1 million providing unlimited alcohol to lab mice.

Outrageous spending extends to the US military. The Pentagon was revealed to have spent $192,952 on Starbucks espresso machines for the US Navy between 2017 and 2021. The US Air Force has been flying C-17 transport aircraft since 2011 but spent $992,856 too much for the spare parts to keep them flying. The Department of Defense also bought soap dispensers that were marked up 7,943 percent, according to a recent DoD inspector general report.

The NIH also likes to fund monkey research, including $33 million for “Monkey Island,” where the beasts are used in research that examines their gambling and methamphetamine addictions. A Florida lab was given $477,000 to investigate “transgender” monkeys, created by giving males female hormones.

Ramaswamy has emphasized his desire to target federal government spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The Department of Health and Human Services alone has a DEI department with 294 staff members. It gives another $29.4 million to an office assessing the health of minorities that ends up going to a host of woke organizations. The US State Department has promoted DEI by spending $20,000 on drag shows in Ecuador.

The list goes on: prisoners received $171 million in social security benefits because apparently no one bothered to check if they were available for work. Taxpayers have also spent $15 million on Covid guru Dr. Anthony Fauci's security since he retired as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.