If you haven’t heard, Congress recently voted to increase their annual spending levels by hundreds of billions of dollars – citing that the caps were so low that their consequences “have been devastating and will last for generations.”
The budget caps were so harsh – they were only able to spend $60,000 on a documentary about the classic film, The Searchers, starring John Wayne.
This makes us wonder – what else did the federal government spend money on last year in these “devastatingly” austere conditions while “we allowed our infrastructure to crumble, care to our veterans to be delayed, and investments in education to fall behind.”
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $50,000 to send an innovative musical performance group named Bang on a Can to China to play in four different cities.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $44,100 to purchase 197 seats and a light controller at a theatre in Uruguay.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $48,000 for a Montana theatre group to produce a minimalist To Kill a Mockingbird play in China for three weeks.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $141,525 on a bonus for a payroll manager at San Francisco’s Presidio Trust.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $200,000 to produce a four-hour documentary about the history of the traveling circus.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $50,400 to publish a book on the “Early Coalitions Between Japanese and American Feminists, from World War I to the U.S. Occupation of Japan.”
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $6.6 million to market wine overseas.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $6.2 million on cars for the USDA that went unused.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $640,000 on unused parking spaces at EPA headquarters.
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to pay 30,000 federal employees a higher salary than all 50 state governors ($190,000).
The budget caps were so harsh – they could only afford to spend $300,000 on the Frankenstein festival.
Or maybe, Congress didn’t need to go deeper into debt to increase spending by hundreds of billions of dollars – and could have instead better prioritized our current budget and our future.
