Money, Honey
I see an old-time government practice is hitting the news. Not that it is unusual, of course, but because this time a Republican did it, and we all know that is just wrong. It does have a somewhat outrageous aspect to it, though.
I refer, of course, to “use it or lose it.”
Congress mandates a ridiculous amount to be spent by a governmental entity. The entity, contrary to expectations, actually spends less than that amount (it actually does happen sometimes) and instead of being praised for being a good and faithful steward of public funds, is repaid by getting lower funding the next year. Hence the use it or lose it, right?
One would think maybe an incentive plan akin to “you help save $X will earn you a bonus of Y% of $X” would be in order…. and in a sane world, it would be. So we don’t.
A newly released analysis of Department of Defense spending shows a staggering $93.4 billion splurge in September 2025, as officials scrambled to exhaust their budget before the fiscal year deadline.
Better quarters? Better messhalls? A few spare missiles? Nope…
Beyond the $6.9 million for lobster, the Pentagon spent:
- $15.1 million on ribeye steaks
- $2 million on Alaskan king crab
- Nearly $140,000 on doughnuts
- Over $124,000 on ice cream machines
And lest you think food alone was bought
- $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for an Air Force residence
- $225 million in furniture, featuring individual chairs costing nearly $1,900
- $12,540 for fruit basket stands
- $5.3 million on Apple devicesFox LA
Perhaps I missed the news when a world-class pianist joined the Air Force? Or when mess halls started routinely serving lobster tails?
The last time the UIOLI was so large was in 2008 (which would be Mr. Bush’s waning years, for those who can’t remember.)
Now, we just had a big fight in Congress over Affordable Care Act tax credits, right? We couldn’t afford ’em was the party line… well, according to Chuckie Schumer this $98 million could have financed that for three years. I doubt his math – but this sure sounds like the kind of thing DOGE was supposed to target.Next time we see how barracks are overrun with mold and bad plumbing, let’s remember what almost $100 million could have done for our troops. And what was done instead. Reminds me of the old Hackworth phrase, “Perfumed Princes”.
“Let them eat cake!”
Stealing Ed’s meme
And swinging to the other side of the spectrum – the new Obama refuse bin library is proving to be a huge moneymaker for the Obamistas, especially Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.
Federal filings viewed by Fox News Digital show Jarrett made $740,000 in 2024, 2023 and 2022, while several former Obama White House officials have collected six-figure salaries as foundation executives.
Total salaries and benefits at the foundation climbed from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024 as staffing expanded to 337 employees and annual revenue reached nearly $210 million, according to the filings.
One suspects that makes her the highest paid library head around. It is a bit more than your average library, though – the 19 acre campus is projected to cost $850,000,000.
Obama’s habits still run true – while his top aides are raking in some very top-aide salaries, the center says it needs volunteers. As in unpaid.
The new program will have 75 to 100 volunteers, known as “ambassadors,” greet and direct visitors around the campus and share information about exhibits at the 22-story museum tower, athletic center and Chicago Public Library branch, among other amenities. It is expected to expand in the future. Fox News
Wouldn’t want to pay those folks now, would we. I know, museum docents typically are volunteers, such as at the Holocaust museums.Lot of money going to the higher-ups, though – you would think a little bit would trickle down.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Democrats, Pentagon
Will the B. Hussein 0bama trashcan have pictures of him as a boy attending school at the madrassa he went to?
Appears David yet again fell victim to poor research and a false liberal narrative laid out by Chuck Schumer.
In September 2024 the DOD purchased $16.6M on ribeye steaks and $6.6M on lobster. This is quite a bit more than 2025. Yet Schumer tried to imply they had spent $93B on such items. And yes, anyone who has ever worked anywhere with an annual budget knows that at the end of the fiscal year the business or agency clears the benches, spending all the money that they have held back in case of an emergency on things that they had forgone earlier in the year. And of course there are senior people who abuse the system like the Air Force CoS who apparently in that world he lives in, felt he deserved a Steinway Piano.
Sounds like they deserve kudos for saving some small amounts of money on steak and lobster.
At some point when repeating Chuck Schumer’s ridiculous and hypocritical talking points David will no longer be a victim but instead a schill. I don’t know at what point that happens.
You may note the accurate numbers are quoted and that I said I doubt his math. Notably he cleverly conflates small parts of the spending with an exaggerated total. But giving him the opening for him to talk about it is bad optics.
Same here. I was on the USS Inchon on my first Med cruise back in 1982, and we had Surf and Turf every other week on Sunday. Weather permitting (and if no flight ops), we would have picnics on the flight deck as well that day. On the way over we’d stop at the Azores and stock up. On my first cruise I was part of a work party to load supplies, and we loaded up what appeared to be hundreds of crates of lobster. That’s when one of the squids heading up the party told us that the captain fed us well and we had surf and turf every other week. I thought he was bullshitting us. He was not. I guess that varied from ship to ship though.
Ah yes…”Steel Beach Picnics” Remember those well too.
I didn’t typically get to enjoy them for more than a few minutes. That whole “when not doing flight ops” part was problematic for us. I was in Aviation Maintenance. “Not doing flight ops” for us means “time to work on the aircraft”. Any minute the birds weren’t in the air, we were working on them.
Not complaining…6 to 9 months at sea goes a lot quicker when you’re keeping busy.
I did a 6 month Med cruise on the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2). I believe it was the Iwo’s last deployment and we were the SAR detachment. Anyway, I had great sympathy for the Marines on board. They tried to keep them busy with PT and cleaning weapons and training and busywork, but it was obvious they were mostly just bored out of their freaking minds.
It’s bad enough spending 6 months cooped up on a big tin can when you’re working to exhaustion 14 hours a day. Doing it when your primary means of occupying your time is sitting around thinking about how shitty this is would drive me nuts.
Yeah, it could he boring at times and our berthing quarters were cramped at best. You guys probably had better quarters but then that’s understandable since you were essentially living on the ship and we were short-term squatters. LOL
Lots of PT and card games and a lot of reading as well when we were not cleaning our weapons. I never could get used to navy showers to preserve water. Taking a cold shower was a bitch at best. I must say though that the chow was pretty good. Even Mid-rats at night were decent chow and when we got to know the cooks better some of them would even make “breakfast to order” for Mid-rats. On my second cruise I was on the Ponce when the tailgate fell off in Morehead City while they were loading all our gear on and they transferred us to the Nassau. As I recall it was similar to the Inchon insofar as berthing was concerned but we did not have Surf and turf every other Sunday. Unless we did and my 64-year-old brain forgot about it.
I had a “surf & turf” meal once in the Army, at An Khe in RVN, and I think I had to pay for it. I threw the inedible lobster tail away and the steak wasn’t very good.
That is because it was Army chow. The Navy purchases perishables like meat and sea food from in theater sources. The Army buys all that stuff in their mass procurement system, which results in low quality meat. I observed how good the food was in an officers’ mess when I went to the Marine Amphib Recon Course at Little Creek, VA.
I remember being a E2 and the end of the federal budget year was coming up, and suddenly we were getting all sorts of parts for our Brads that all summer long I had been told “the unit doesn’t have the money for that”. Then October started and we were right back to “we don’t have money for that”.
I remember seeing the supply room suddenly giving out stuff like thermoses when we had linen exchange back in the early 90s!
Your supply room gave you stuff?!
i figure if EBT recipients can get steak and lobster, so can Servicemembers….
Only once did we get steak – Vietnam, China Beach picnic. Note the fine service and USMC dictated etiquette.
Etiquette
Was seperated in Nov. 1966 from the Navy and the LPH 3 home ported at Norfolk NOB, and in 1967 she changed homeports to San Diego and went to Viet-Nam with their Marine BLT’s. One of the vets told me that he and other crew members went to China Beach…
We used to take a deuce and a half on to the beach and
fill it with sand bags.Couple of guys would fill bags while
a couple of guys would swim and one guy would guard,
DaNang PX had pretty good steak and hot dogs.
China Beach 1970:
RVN0034.JPG
Did you see all the dead sea snakes they would hang from the lifeguard towers? We stayed out of the water.
Wish I could get the photo to load.
Just one of us with a M-16 and a .45 but yeah,
we were warned about the snakes.
It was a beautiful beach otherwise.
Figures. Freakin Jarhead. LMAO I’m a Beirut vet and I can tell you that our table manners didn’t improve any since your time. We aint gots no manners. LOL
Grimmy, was that pic taken at Camp Reasoner?
Never mind, it must have been taken at China Beach. there were no trees in your recon battalion area, as I recall.
“Money Honey” Clyde McPhater and the Drifters, 1953 on
the Atlantic record label…
“Color of the label? Maroon.”
Also Black on top yellow on bottom, black on top red on bottom…
Knew you would jump on that!
Here ya go:
https://youtu.be/N8oNHMNCSjQ
“Nearly $140,000 on doughnuts”
So that’s where the term dollars to doughnuts came from…..
And thats one I missed Beans, Cong-Rats. Check out money Honey (Drifters) I put as a comment and 4 got to type in wheres Beans. There used to be more sayings than Carter has liver pills Later Alligator and keep a stiff upper lip.
Unfortunately, due to the rules regarding what moneys can be spent on what items / categories there will always be situations like this. If there is a surplus in food budget, they can’t reallocate the money to barracks maintenance. That would be “wrong”. Therefor they MUST spend it on food and in order to keep the budget they go after the big ticket items because if it was on say hamburger meat, they couldn’t “use” it before it went bad or that budgetary timeline expired. That would be “wasteful”.
Yup, “different colors of money”, AKA “different pots of money.”
I hated buying $500 worth of pencils just before the end of fiscal year.
Just sayin’…you can make a case either way.
The lobster and seafood purchases are not for generals’ dinners. They are generally bulk food contracts for military dining facilities, ships, bases, and special meals across the entire force (holiday meals, morale events, etc.).
The Steinway piano was reportedly for the official residence of the Air Force Chief of Staff.
It is situated on Generals Row at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia. Built in the 1890s, the historic red brick building serves as both a home and a venue for official Air Force functions.
The residence is part of a series of historic homes on the base that house senior military leaders, including the Chief of Staff of the Army and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Official residences and government reception areas sometimes host:
diplomatic eventsformal receptionsmilitary band performancesceremonies
Just some more grift. Do you have to show ID to enter this grand mosque/basketball court/library? POS stole the land it sits on,from the veterans that owned it. Too cheap to buy his own property.
B. Hussein 0bama has spent his entire life traipsing around with the attitude that everyone owes him, leopards never change their spots!
In Chu Lai, in the Viet of the Nam, the HQ base camp for the 1st Marine Division had steak and lobster every Sunday afternoon. As an Army CPT, I observed it every Sunday for about a month until the division departed in May 1971. Needless to say, their steaks and lobsters left with them. The 1st Recon Battalion did however leave me an arms room full of AK47’s, a 60 mm mortar, and a case of K-bars.