Let's Cut Some Spending: Nearly $750,000 for safety at NYC's Metropolitan Opera

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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 that 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: Nearly $750,000 for New York’s Metropolitan Opera safety!

From Sen. James Lankford’s website:

If you go to New York City and pay for a very high-dollar ticket to get into a private location in the Metropolitan Opera to be able to watch the opera. You will feel safer, I’m sure, when you go to the Metropolitan Opera because almost three-quarters of a million dollars was given to the Metropolitan Opera in New York to help them install a new fire suppression system with federal tax dollars.

Operas are nice. They have entertained generations of Americans and can be a special treat when visiting a major city like New York City.

BUT...

Where, exactly, in the Constitution does it describe how it is the federal government's role to use our tax dollars to make sure New York's Metropolitan Opera - or any opera house, anywhere - is up to code?

We are $33 trillion in debt. We DON'T HAVE the money for this and million other things this government wastes money on.

And even if we did, New York can take care of itself. Not our job or problem.