Washington, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) marked Tax Day with the announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been voted champion of his second-annual Egregious Eight Tournament of Waste. The EPA garnered the dubious honor for spending $1.1 million on the salaries of eight employees as they spent 21,000 hours on administrative leave for accused misconduct.

The EPA narrowly defeated runner-up U.S. Department of Agriculture, which advanced to the finals for subsidizing a little-known crop insurance add-on called Harvest Price Option (HPO) that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost taxpayers $19 billion over the next 10 years.

“Figures the championship would go to a bunch of flakes,” said Flake.

 

Background: The Egregious Eight Tournament of Waste is the yearly culmination of Flake's weekly efforts to highlight egregious and unnecessary federal spending through his #PorkChops series and oversight reports. The March Madness-style tournament pits eight examples of unnecessary federal spending against one other, allowing individuals to vote to advance the items they consider to be the most egregious.

Other spending items featured in this year’s tournament include:

• $1.4 million for the Department of Health and Human Services to fund a series of studies to determine if stressed-out monkeys with access to cocaine are vulnerable to cocaine abuse
• $400,000 for the Department of Defense to sponsor an Alaskan snowmobile race
• $210,000 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to renovate a facility that produces flavoring for e-cigarettes

For more information, click here.

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