Roman Balmakov is a Reporter with The Epoch Times and host of the show, “Facts Matter.” He has travelled around the country (as well as overseas) covering protests, riots, and elections. He is also the producer of many Epoch Times’ commercials, both on TV and social media.

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Facts Matter investigates complex issues, and then presents the findings in a way that is easy to understand. We are free from the influence of any government, corporation, or political party. Our goal is to bring you accurate information so that you can form your own opinion, stay informed, and stay free.

Roman Balmakov is a reporter with The Epoch Times and host of the show “Facts Matter.” He has travelled around the country and overseas in his coverage of protests, riots, and elections. He is also the producer of many Epoch Times’ commercials, both on TV and social media.

Facts Matter

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For the past 11 years, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has released his annual “Festivus Report” to air grievances. While the name is a reference to a Seinfeld episode, the report itself is legitimate, detailing what he believes were some of the most egregious examples of the federal government wasting our tax dollars in the previous year.

Since the start of the report, the dollar amount of the government “waste” he cites has grown significantly.

In 2015, it was a little over a billion dollars. By 2019, it was $50 billion dollars. The latest report for 2025 showed that the figure hit a cool $1.639 trillion dollars. It’s worth mentioning that a huge portion of that total comes from interest payments on the national debt, which Senator Paul now includes in his overall tally. U.S. taxpayers paid $1.22 trillion dollars in interest just to service the national debt last year. That is significantly more than the Pentagon’s entire budget—and given the fact that that money is literally going to nothing other than interest, there’s a good case to be made to include that figure in the overall wasted spending report.

Setting the interest payments aside, let’s go through nine of the most interesting examples of government waste from the report.

<em>Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of  NTD.</em>

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9 Eye-Opening Examples of ‘Waste Spending’ From Rand Paul’s $1.6 Trillion ‘Festivus’ Report