Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays…and, to quote Seinfeld: a Festivus for the rest of us!

Every year, one of WCW’s most eagerly-anticipated holiday delights is Senator Rand Paul’s “Festivus Report,” exposing wasteful spending across the federal government.

We always enjoy working with Senator Paul to find and expose waste in the Festivus report — like nicotine-addicted fish, drunk rats, and lizards blasted with leaf blowers — and this year’s report once again shines a bright light on some of the cruel, wasteful, and downright silly animal experiments paid for with YOUR tax dollars.

It’s that time of year again #wastereportwednesday🗑🔥💸

My 2021 Festivus Report is officially out! This year we found a whopping $52,598,515,585.00 billion dollars in government waste.

Head over to my website to read the entire review and let us know your favorite! pic.twitter.com/0cuPvw0mBn

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) December 22, 2021

Studying gambling habits seems pretty easy. Go to a casino with a notepad, sit down, take notes, rinse and repeat.

But what if the gamblers you studied…were pigeons?

We’re not joking. The NIH awarded $465,339 to the psychology department of Reed College to create “an innovative animal model of slot machine gambling with pigeons using a token economy.”

“$465,339 awarded in research grants to a study that investigated ‘pigeons gambling habits’ as a way to understand human’s gambling addiction.” https://t.co/zp1le4dbLE

— White Coat Waste Project (WCW)🥼🗑️ (@WhiteCoatWaste) December 23, 2021

The experiment’s summary calls pigeon slot machine research “critically important.”

We call it “critically wasteful.”

But when it comes to animals in the Festivus Report, however, it’s not all fun and games. The FDA granted a Canadian company named “NovaEel” $337,500 of your money to raise fat juvenile eels. Why? To keep costs down for eel consumers.

This comes on the heels of years of other experiments by NovaEel, in which they have attempted to transform male eels into female eels by giving them estradiol (a form of estrogen). See, female eels weigh more than male eels, so if males can be transformed into females, they can get bigger…and so can the profits of companies who raise eels for consumption.

Like NovaEel.

See how it works? “We need more money, so give us money to do experiments, because our experiments will help us make more money.”

Big oil. Big tech. And now, big eel, courtesy of your tax dollars. We have to ask…what happened to the free market?

The Festivus weirdness doesn’t end with eels. Unfortunately, taxpayers are also footing the bill for cruelty, some of which has gone on for over a decade.

Take Triple F Farms, for instance. Senator Paul notes that taxpayers have paid $4.5 million since 2010 for breeding ferrets, and transporting them to labs…where they are used in cruel and wasteful experiments with influenza, and, more recently, Covid-19.

Triple F Farms has been in the news before — in 2011, an investigation found them to be in violation of animal welfare laws. Video emerged of ferrets being run over by carts, and being thrown into incinerators while they were still alive. But after a tiny fine, Triple F Farms continued business as usual. Recent inspections have found other violations, revealing that very little has changed. The abuse continues. Sadly, your tax bill for ferret abuse continues, too.

Finally, even though he did not mention it in his Festivus Report, we know that Senator Paul is concerned about Dr. Fauci’s wasteful and cruel experiments on beagles — or, as we call it, #BeagleGate.

In October, Sen. Paul and several colleagues sent a letter to Dr. Fauci, pressing him for details on his dog experiments, and now, he’s bringing the 🔥 🔥 🔥 on Twitter, too:

of course Fauci didn’t limit himself to Covid this year. He also funded torturing puppies and monkeys. And no I’m not kidding. https://t.co/CB6ErHzOVk

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 23, 2021

Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent. Unfortunately, many recipients of taxpayer funds don’t seem to feel the same way, and conveniently “forget” to publish this information…in violation of federal transparency laws. That’s a problem.

The solution is the COST Act, which would require all labs to put a public price tag on their animal experiments — and cut funding from rogue labs that don’t comply.

Don’t wait until next Festivus. Take action today, and tell Congress to pass the COST Act!