By Patrick Baron
BLOOMINGTON – A financial watchdog says there is too much wasteful spending going on across the nation when it comes to federal grants.
Adam Andrezjewski of Open the Books said a new report highlights the exact numbers for what grants are being funded and where the money is going. Andrezjewski said the report “Where’s the Pork?” reveals the federal government spent $583 billion on grants in fiscal year 2016.
“We organized it, we mapped it by zip code across the whole country. There’s over a half million grants dolled out. The average grant is a million bucks,” Andrzejewski said. “You can see right there in Bloomington who got what for how much by which federal agency, what entity received the money for what purpose.”
He pointed to one grant in particular that came into Adam Kinzginer’s district that went to Northern Illinois University. Andrzejewski said the nearly $200,000 grant was used in a four-week study “in which racially diverse, bisexual women” utilized electronic diaries to write down their experiences with microaggresions.
“[Participants] cataloged it through an online diary and researchers relied on the diary, along with interviews, to assess how microaggressions affect daily and lifetime mental health,” said Andrzejewski. “This is waste and Kinzinger should be embarrassed.”
You can read more on the report and view the spending map at www.openthebooks.com.
Patrick Baron can be reached at [email protected].
