By: Harry Fernandez
The federal goverment has an apparent taste for pricey shellfish, chowing down on $4.6 million worth of lobster tail and crab in the final month of the fiscal year 2018, according to OpenTheBooks.com Opens a New Window. .
The use-it-or-lose-it spending spree last year racked up $97 billion of U.S. tax payer money on 509,828 contracts, an increase of more than 16 percent compared to the prior year.
"We looked at the year, it was $22 million spent by the Pentagon on lobster tail alone, over the course of the past four years on lobster tail alone it was nearly $55 million," Openthebooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski told FOX Business’ David Asman Opens a New Window. .
Some of the additional wasteful government spending Opens a New Window. ran the gamut, here's a look...
- Workout and Recreation Equipment: $9.8 million
- iPhones and iPads: $7.7 million
- Musical Equipment: $1.7 million
- Golf Carts: $673,471
- Booz: $308,994
- China Tableware: $53,004
- Wexford Leather Club Chair: $9,241
Federal agencies scrambled to use what is left in their annual budget by September 2018 to ensure that Congress Opens a New Window. doesn’t appropriate less money in the next year.
"More than half of [the spending] was in the last week," Andrzejewski said on "Bulls & Bears Opens a New Window. ." "Incredibly, one out of every ten contracts procured during the entire year was spent in the last week."
The spending spree totaled $53 billion in the final week of fiscal year 2018.
Openthebooks.com found the Department of Defense ($61.2 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($5.7 billion), the Department of Veterans Affairs ($5.4 billion), the Department of Homeland Security ($4.2 billion), and the Department of State ($4.0 billion) were among the top five agencies that paid 85.6 percent of all the contracts.
