The Department of Defense Spent a Whopping $22 Million of Taxpayer Dollars on Lobster Tail Last Year

The Department of Defense needs its ridiculously large budget (Trump’s doomed 2020 proposal allocates them $750 billion) for military equipment, those spiffy uniforms and, you know, an unbelievable amount of lobster tail. Specifically, $22 million, as OpenTheBooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski told FOX Business.

OpenTheBooks.com is a public charity that exposes the mind-boggling spending spree the federal government goes on during the last month of the fiscal year (September). The organization explains this use-it-or-lose-it logic in their report:

In the final month of the fiscal year, federal agencies scramble to spend what’s left in their annual budget. Agencies worry spending less than their budget allows might prompt Congress to appropriate less money in the next fiscal year. To avoid this, federal agencies choose to embark on an annual shopping spree rather than admit they can operate on less.

So, let’s see what the federal government used taxpayers’ money for last year and try not to weep!

First off, in September, 66 federal agencies spent $97 billion in an effort to use their entire budget—$53 billion of which was spent in the final week of the month. That amount spent in the last seven days of the fiscal year is more than the agencies spent for the entire month of August. In September, the Department of Defense, clearly fans of high-end seafood, spent $2.3 million on crab (snow crab, Alaskan king crab, and crab legs and claws) and $2.3 million on lobster tail. You could say the Pentagon is being a little shellfish (sorry).

Here’s a quick roster of other items federal agencies splurged on in September 2018:

—Wexford leather club chair … $9,341
—Golf carts … $673,471
—Skis and ski poles … $49,515
—Commercial foosball table … $11,816
—Trombones … $71,844
—Tubas … $44,967
—French horns … $17,800
—Impending sense of doom at the state of our nation … priceless

The Department of Defense’s spending spree totaled $61.2 billion, far outstripping the second-biggest September spender, the Department of Health and Human Services ($5.7 billion). Meanwhile, the national debt is topping $22 trillion and a Trump official is boasting that his budget proposal “will have more reductions in spending than any president in history has ever proposed” … mostly pertaining to food stamps, Medicare and other social services.

The next time you’re discussing a concept like universal healthcare and someone says, “but how are we going to pay for it?,” you can start here.