Take for instance the $35.38 million given to political parties to help pay for the national conventions leading up to the presidential election. You may think this money is restricted to security for elected officials, but instead, the taxpayer money “could help pay for the stages, confetti, balloons, food, and booze” for attendees.

Among many other examples, Coburn sheds light on $30 million sent to Pakistan for agriculture assistance before the program was deemed ineffective and cancelled; $6 million for small airports, 62.5 percent of which never met a single grant objective; $4.38 billion in wartime contracting waste and fraud; another $14.3 million (for a grand total of $65 million) for Alaska’s famous bridge to nowhere; $120 million in benefits to dead federal employees; $17.8 million in foreign aid to China, the largest holder of our federal debt; and $484,000 to a Texas drug themed pizzeria which is considered a high risk environment for lenders.

At some point it’s easy to lose sight of what these numbers mean, but some anecdotes serve as a reminder that when one constituency wins, another loses. Los Angeles allegedly “redirected $1 million in taxpayer money intended to help the city’s homeless and low income residents to a wealthy international architecture firm designing a NFL football stadium.”

Furthermore, as much as $1 billion in taxpayer money intended as a tax credit for energy efficient home improvements was given to those who have no record of owning a home, including prisoners and children. And while it may be illegal for humans to do cocaine, taxpayers funded a study looking for connections between cocaine usage and sexual habits… in quails.

The report outlines far too many examples to list here. And some sound so unbelievable, we recommend you just take a look for yourself.

Fox News reports:

Given her years-long saga in the California court system that led to her hours-long incarceration, Lohan could have cost taxpayers over $250,000 per hour of the jail time she just served, experts say.

“This should cause an outrage,” criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson told Fox411.com. “Why should Lindsay Lohan’s hand be held? Why should she be given umpteenth chances and everyone else the book gets thrown at them? It doesn’t seem to be fair.”

Jackson tells Fox411 that if Lohan were not a celebrity, she absolutely would have been booked for the full 300 days without lenience this time around.

“The real issue is the normal Joe Schmo who doesn’t have her clout, her money, and her fame which gets a judge to cheer for her,” Jackson said. “For a normal person a judge would say, ‘You’re going to jail for a year.’”

And while Lohan can afford to pay her attorneys to keep her out of jail, her consistent bad behavior is costing California taxpayers hundreds of thousands – and possibly millions — of dollars, all while gumming up the state’s overloaded justice system.

“It has likely cost taxpayers millions of dollars,” attorney Vikki Ziegler contends. “This has been a four year ordeal that taxpayers in California must foot. That includes salaries for judges, prosecutors, court officers, court reporters, clerks, [and] other law enforcement professionals, who must all be paid, to have touched the Lohan case directly or indirectly in one shape or another.”

Bernie Sanders touts the report as proof the Department of Defense can reign in spending by cracking down on fraud and malfeasance — and not by hallowing the force.

The Department of Defense has already been targeted for $350 billion in budget cuts as a result of last August’s debt deal. But this new report has some lawmakers calling for more.

Sanders, summarizing the internal Pentagon report, saying, “[More than $250 million] went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period. Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.”

Two major scandals unveiled in the report involve $10.5 million spent by Lockheed Martin in 2008 to settle fraud charges and $62 million paid by Northrop Grumman in 2005 to settle fraud scheme allegations.

Yet other lawmakers stress that the Pentagon isn’t wasting money, but rather lawmakers are to blame for ordering “unnecessary projects, superfluous tests, reports and contracting procedures.”

Scott Amey, general counsel for the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, argued last Friday, “The amount of money given to these companies is staggering, but what really is mind-boggling is the willingness of the DoD to provide additional taxpayer dollars to the same back actors again and again. Taxpayers are unlikely to see any changes until DoD holds contractors more accountable — especially those defrauding the government.”

In 2007 alone, taxpayer-funded Medicare shelled out $148 million subsidizing hydrocodone, fentanyl, oxycodone and other narcotics, Bloomberg reports.

This class of drugs is amongst the most frequently abused.

The Senate report indicates that many Medicare patients prescribed the narcotics might not be using them the way the doctor ordered — costing taxpayers up to $150 million each year.

Approximately 170,000 Medicare patients in 2008 convinced at least five different doctors to prescribe narcotics. Some patients were found to have prescriptions from more than 80 providers — suggesting that the pills were being resold for profit and illegal use.

As Sen. Scott Brown, the senior Republican of the report-producing Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said, “Beyond the fraud and abuse, taxpayer dollars are potentially being used to fuel the illicit prescription drug trade.”

The day before the release of the report, the government announced they would expand the Medicare drug program to cover benzodiazepines and barbiturates — also commonly abused drugs.  This expanded coverage, approved by George W. Bush in 2008, will cost taxpayers $1.9 billion through 2018.

Ironically, and unfortunately, it seems that Washington’s spending addiction could be fueling other, just as harmful, addictions.

In a recent audit, reported on by The New York Times, the Department of Justice is scolded for “extravagant and potentially wasteful” spending on conferences dating back to the end of the Bush presidency and continuing into Obama’s tenure.

From 2008 to 2009, the Department of Justice spent $121 million on 1,832 conferences. The bulk of the waste? Snacks.

Food and refreshment costs skyrocketed due to agreements the Department made with hotel’s exclusive catering vendors in exchange for free meeting space.

The result: $16 muffins, $10 cookies and brownies, $5.57 cans of soda — all consumed by the thousands, as taxpayers footed the bill.

While Department officials argue the benefits of free meeting space are balanced by the high refreshment prices, the audit found “the conferences often ended up spending tens of thousands more on food and beverage than the minimum necessary to secure the ‘free’ meeting rooms.”

This report is another blow to the DoJ, which received similar criticisms in 2007. Since then, they have enacted measures in an attempt to put an end to wasteful spending – and apparently having little affect.  We hope this audit can serve as a wakeup call for all agencies to spend more responsibly.

Washington cupcakes aren’t cheap. But they sure do beat a $16 muffin.

According to the Commission’s estimates, 29 percent of total contract spending spent on both wars over the last decade was wasteful or fraudulent.

Of the $60 billion lost, U.S. military authorities believe $360 million changed hands through the Taliban and other unsavory characters, as the insurgents threaten Afghan contractors and force them to pay for protection. Most of this money was then lost to criminals and power-brokers through profiteering, bribery and extortion, AP reports.

Pulling money through U.S.-funded construction and transportation contracts is a top income source for Afghan insurgents – second only to the illegal drug trade.

Corruption and poor oversight has caused billions of dollars to fall between the cracks, as a large number of projects in Iraq and Afghanistan are carried out by contractors that are neither well monitored nor coordinated. In some instances, the presence of contractors has out-numbered that of U.S. soldiers.

Some projects themselves have become unsalvageable, like the distribution of seed and fertilizer to drought-ridden Afghanistan areas. The project started with an estimated cost of $60 million, but costs quickly rose in excess of $360 million.

Commission member and former Department of Defense Controller Dov Zakheim explained to PBS, “We believe that unless there is top-level focus on this, unless the culture is changed, unless commanders recognize how important it is…unless there’s a focus on contracting in a proper way, we’re going to make the same mistakes, waste the same money. And the debt crisis shows us that we don’t have the money to waste.”

U.S. tax dollars have funded $206 billion total in contracts and grants supporting U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As troops come home and hand off projects to locals along the way, costs should be better monitored to ensure both financial and national security.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, power companies are estimated to receive $16.2 billion through 2020 as a result of lawsuits against the federal government for reneging on its promise to start storing waste in 1998.

More troubling, $25 billion in fees collected via an energy surcharge on consumers was emptied into a general fund and spent elsewhere, leaving no money allocated for disposal.

Even if the money was available, the “not in my backyard” mentality can derail plans, as $13.5 billion was spent developing Yucca Mountain in Nevada before construction was halted by the Obama Administration.

While The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future recently released a draft report detailing several steps to resolve the waste “impasse,” it remains to be seen whether this polarized Congress will act on any of its recommendations.

Taxpayers should not see billions of their dollars wasted due to Washington gridlock. But without a reasonable compromise, we may be left looking for an unscrupulous Sanitation Commissioner to cram our waste down a Springfield mineshaft.

As reported by The Washington Post, Gov. McDonnell traveled 140 days during his first 17 months in office, making use of two state-owned planes and four helicopters. This cost Virginians more than $228,000 – far more than the Governor’s annual salary of $175,000.

While his daughter must have enjoyed being crowned queen of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, it may be a stretch to claim that such a trip provided “essential services” to Virginians. Such is the limitation placed on state travel funds by the VA Department of Accounts (DOA), which further prohibits spending to “accommodate personal comfort, convenience, and taste.”

With $1,600 spent on the flight to the NASCAR race, constituents may question if a drive down Virginia’s interstate highways would have sufficed instead. The same could be said for the $9,000 spent last year for the five flights between Richmond and Washington, a two-hour drive.

All told, the state has spent $12 million on planes alone for the governor’s use. At a time when families are tightening their budgets, Gov. McDonnell should set an example by limiting his flights to only the most critical circumstances.

The Washington Post reports:

A year-long military-led investigation has concluded that U.S. taxpayer money has been indirectly funneled to the Taliban under a $2.16 billion transportation contract that the United States has funded in part to promote Afghan businesses.

Four out of eight contractors were found to be hiring a “labyrinth” of subcontractors who then transferred $3.3 million to insurgents “in the form of weapons, explosives, and cash” in order to protect travel of the contractor’s trucks, which bring supplies and people.

The Washington Post reports that unlike contracting in Iraq, which consists mainly of American contractors, 53% of contractors hired by the U.S. military in Afghanistan are Afghani. A proper vetting of these vendors is difficult and tedious: currently the military employs approximately 100,000 vendors in Afghanistan.

At a time when our nation is struggling to make ends meet, such a lack of oversight comes at a great expenses for American taxpayers and puts our contractors and troops in further danger.

As reported by The Virginian-Pilot, the Benjamin Isherwood and Henry Eckford ships will be scrapped following 25 years of political wrangling and construction limbo. This comes after $300 million was spent in the first attempt to build the ships, in 1985.

Sadly, these ships were never finished and, after many deals to salvage the ships failed, they will unfortunately never be used.

Since 1993, they have languished in the James River at 95 and 84 percent completion, respectively. At a cost of millions, ownership switched from the Navy, to the US Maritime Administration (MARAD), and now to the private company Able UK.

The English shipyard took control of the Isherwood and Eckford this past June, but quickly concluded that plans to complete the vessels were futile due to their obsolete single-hull design.

Now they are en route to International Shipbreaking Limited in Brownsville, Texas as part of an undisclosed scrap deal that leaves taxpayers with nothing to show for two and half decades of bureaucratic neglect.

Perhaps Joseph Keefe, lead commentator at Maritime Professional, described the Washington oil tanker snafu best, as “one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding and for that matter, federal fiduciary folly.”

While $300 million is not equal to our $14.3 trillion debt, each taxpayer dollar saved is another step in the right direction.