It's not the holiday season until a list tallying potentially wasteful government spending hits the Web.
This year, the annual tradition gets some Star Wars flair with Sen. Jeff Flake's, R.-Ariz, "Wastebook: The Farce Awakens," an accounting of 100 federal programs the senator's office deemed wasteful for fiscal 2015.
Among the highlights in Flake's opus of superfluous spending includes $276,000 to study how those deemed less attractive end up with a hotter partner, $5 million to throw parties for hipsters to encourage them not to smoke tobacco and $1 million to train marmoset monkeys to run on a treadmill.
Related: Read the report
The list runs the gamut from $400 million spent by state health exchanges on bank fees and design, even though federal funds were not meant to cover operating costs after January 2015, to $77,000 on an anti-drunk-driving campaign in Tennessee that warned of the beer goggle-effect and called women "clingy."
The federal waste list follows in from retired Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s, R.-Okla., tradition of tallying seemingly ridiculous programs and the federal spending they have accrued.
And while the wasteful spending list is hardly new, the themes used to roll them out speak as loudly as the legislators’ opinions on the budget. Sen. James Lankford, R.-Okla., also released a wasteful spending list, themed around the football analogy of "Federal Fumbles,", no doubt channeling the gridiron popularity within his home state.
But as excitement builds around the release of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens,", Flake appears to know how to play to his audience, those both fiscally conservative and galactically aware.
