Let's Cut Some Spending: $1.3 billion to Russia and China

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Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read and cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.

Today’s offering: $1.3 billion to Russia and China!

From Open The Books' Substack:

Examples of government waste and taxpayer abuse are virtually limitless, but it’s particularly absurd when spending is directed toward foreign nations antagonistic to American interests.

OpenTheBooks.com teamed up with Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) to investigate federal tax dollars flowing to entities based in China and Russia. Using data obtained from government disclosures, we uncovered $1.3 billion in spending that ultimately ended up in the two adversarial countries since 2017.

The $1.3 billion is likely not the full story, as federal agencies do not track where all tax dollars are being spent.

Organizations that receive direct grants or contracts from federal agencies often share the money with subcontractors or sub-grantees who help fulfill the task or perform the research. But the federal government has inconsistent processes to track that money and cannot account for all of it. When our tax dollars move even further through entities abroad, we quickly lose track.

While this goes beyond the 2021 and 2022 budgets that we focus on in the Let's Cut Some Spending series, the $1.3 billion spent beginning in 2017 has continued until now and throughout both those years. Including, as part of this spending, "In June 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported at least $1,413,720 million in taxpayer money flowed into the Wuhan lab."

That Chinese Wuhan lab, of course, being where many, including the FBI, believe is the likeliest origin of COVID-19.

The report also notes, "Washington sends mixed messages when it uses one hand to rattle sabers and the other hand to write checks. Our analysis reveals billions of dollars in spending on projects that are pointless, disturbing, alarming, and in some cases all three."

Pointless, disturbing, and alarming is right.