WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The US government has spent $387,000 on a research program that gave rabbits Swedish massages, US Senator Dan Coats’ office said in a statement on Wednesday following the Senator’s “Waste of the Week” speech on the US Senate floor.
“In his third ‘Waste of the Week’ speech, Coats discussed a taxpayer-funded study by the National Institutes of Health in which eighteen New Zealand white rabbits received 30-minute massages, four times a day,” the statement said.
The research cost US taxpayers $387,000.
“Eliminating waste like this won’t change Washington’s long-term fiscal picture,” Coats said in his speech. “But it is still important to ensure taxpayer funding of projects like this doesn’t keep going and going and going.”
In his first two “Waste of the Week” addresses, Coats highlighted a legal loophole that allows people to collect Social Security Disability Insurance and Unemployment Insurance benefits as well as duplication of programs supporting entrepreneurship.
