The Swine Sixteen: A Tournament of Pork Barrel Spending

With March Madness in full swing and Tax Day just around the corner, this is an ideal time to review the many pork barrel spending programs on which our government blows our hard-earned tax dollars.

Over the next two weeks your votes will decide which of 16 budget-busting boondoggles will be crowned the Champion of Pork.

The first 8 matchups are listed below, and here’s the tournament schedule:

March 28-30 voting on Sweet 16

March 31 announce the winners advancing to the Elite 8

March 31-April 1 voting on Elite 8

April 2 announce winners advancing to the Final 4

April 2-3 voting on the Final 4

April 4 announce the two winners advancing the the Championship of Pork

April 4-6 voting on the top pork barrel program

April 7 a winner is crowned

Once you’ve voted, be sure to tweet your picks for each matchup using #CutItOut

And to learn more about questionable spending, check out Spendopedia, a wiki tracking over $200 billion in pork barrel waste.

Matchup 1

Catfish Inspections – $14 million

Most Americans are unaware of the Department of Agriculture’s catfish inspections – a hotly contested issue in the farm bill. Every year, the USDA wastes about $14 million on inspections that are duplicative to the Food and Drug Administration’s own catfish inspections.

vs.

TSA Receive Unearned Raise – $17.5 million

In October 2013, the Washington Times reported that Transportation Security Agency employees had been promoted and received pay increases without any extra responsibility. With merely a title change, the TSA wasted up to $18 million in salary alone within a five-year period. So if you want to increase your salary without adding any responsibility, the Transportation Security Administration is your place to work.

<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922180/”>Swine 16 Match 1: Which is Worse?</a>

Matchup 2

Climate Change on Cows – $19.5 million What other way to test climate change than to test on cows, right? In May of 2013, the Department of Agriculture awarded $19.5 million to the University of Wisconsin and Oklahoma State University to focus on the impacts of climate on dairy and beef cattle.

vs.

Loan to Build Aquarium in Brazil– $105 million In 2012, the Export-Import Bank, approved a hefty loan, to the tune of $105 million, to help fund the construction of an aquarium in Brazil. The state-of-the-art aquarium will have four floors, 25 large tanks, house 500 species and 35,000 creatures, making it the largest aquarium in the Southern Hemisphere and third largest in the world.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922181/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Swine 16 Match 2: Which is Worse?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Matchup 3

NASA Funds Mars Food Preparation Study – $1.2 million In case we ever make it to the planet Mars, we will have a food menu ready. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation program has created over 100 foods that could someday be served on Mars. Too bad we don’t have a space program to Mars anymore.

vs.

IRS Bonuses– $92 million In case you didn’t dislike the IRS already, the Associated Press reported the agency planned to pay out more than $70 million in bonuses over a period of a few months. Did we mention, this was the around the same time they were asking 90,000 employees to take unpaid leave as a result of sequestration?

<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922187/”>Swine 16 Match 3: Which is Worse?</a>

Matchup 4

One Full-Time Intern for USDA – $2 million For their third appearance in the challenge, the USDA does not disappoint. Officials at the department spent $2 million on an intern program, which only hired one intern.

vs.

GSA conferences– $6.7 million Last year, the General Services Administration was caught spending excessive amounts of money on lavish conferences. An independent internal auditor found that GSA had spent over $6.7 million on conferences. One example was the $823,000 spent in one conference in Las Vegas with line items including $146,527 for catering, $75,000 for team-building exercises making bikes, and a $31,000 networking reception.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922193/”&amp;amp;amp;gt;Swine 16 Match 4: Which is Worse?&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt; Matchup 5

Fisker Automotive Loans – $530 million In 2008, Fisker Automotive and its electric Karma sedan, received a $528 million credit line through the Department of Energy’s new vehicle loan program, developed a year prior. When Fisker missed its sales milestones, the DOE froze Fisker’s line of credit to prevent them from drawing out additional loans but Fisker had already drawn $192.3 million. The Karma design was plagued with malfunctions and received a failing grade from Consumer Reports.

vs.

EPA Manager Defrauds Agency– $900,0000 Former Environmental Protection Agency staffer John Beale was once the highest paid official at EPA and a leading expert on climate change. He would often take long absences and claimed to making “secret trips” to Pakistan for the CIA. Thirteen years and $900,000 later, Beale finally got caught and admitted to his massive fraud.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922195/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Swine 16 Match 5: Which is Worse?&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Matchup 6

HHS Conference Spending – $56 million The Department of Health and Human Services held over 140 conferences in one year alone, costing taxpayers $56,130,874. Some of the spending highlights included $1,130,000 on Head Start’s National Research Conference and a conference to advance the President’s Year of Community Living at a price tag of $646,267.

vs.

Studying Shrimp on a Treadmill– $682,570 The National Science Foundation approved money for a study titled, “Taking the Pulse of Marine Life in Stressed Seas.” The research included studying shrimp on a treadmill to identify if crabs and shrimp perform differently on a treadmill if they are under stress. Red Lobster, anyone?

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922196/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Swine 16 Match 6: Which is Worse?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Matchup 7

IRS and VA $112,000 training videos – $112,000 The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs thought it was necessary to make parody videos for training purposes. The IRS spent $60,000 creating “Star Trek” and “Gilligan’s Island” themed videos and the VA spent $52,000 parodying the film “Patton.”

vs.

Chinese Study on Swine Manure– $28 million The Environmental Protection Agency handed out $28 million in grants to international recipients, and of these grants, $141,450 went to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for the purposes of treating swine manure.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/7922201/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Swine 16 Match 7: Which is Worse?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Matchup 8

Dead Farmers Improperly Paid Millions – $2 million The Government Accountability Office released a report in June 2013 detailing how agencies under the Department of Agriculture had been giving financial assistance to deceased farmers. The Farm Service Agency made $3.3 million in payments to the deceased. They were able to recover less than $1 million of the improper payments.

vs.

Empty Afghanistan Headquarters– $34 million Sitting in Afghanistan is a fancy new military headquarters with a tiered seating operations centers, spacious offices, high-tech chairs and top-of-the-line air conditioning units. The construction was completed at a total cost of $34 million. The only problem is that the military has no plans to ever use the facilities.