A closer look at spending Sen. Jeff Flake calls wasteful

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Flake was in the national spotlight recently with a report about tax dollars paid to professional sports teams for events honoring veterans.

The investigation into what the Arizona Republican termed “paid patriotism” began with one of the news releases – called “Pork Chops” – that his office regularly sends out identifying spending he thinks is wasteful.

These releases often describe the targeted spending as an “egregious waste of taxpayer dollars.”

But one senator’s wasteful spending can be someone else’s valuable investment.

Here are five examples from the past year of spending that Flake has criticized but that others see as justifiable and even necessary. Each item includes an explanation of where the money went.

Counting goats

The spending: $47.8 million to conduct the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture.

What Flake said: The information collected includes the location of goats being raised around the country. “Come time for spending cuts, USDA just made it a little easier to separate the sheep from the goats,” Flake said.

The explanation: Joseph Reilly, administrator of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the agricultural census is conducted every five years as part of a series of reports across every sector of the U.S. economy. This information is combined to calculate the country’s gross domestic product, the critical measure of economic growth. The agricultural census costs a lot because the USDA attempts to contact people on all of the more than 2 million farms, first by mail, then by phone, Reilly said. The census is the basis for all sorts of statistical reports that drive policy decisions, he said. One example he cited is administering the crop-insurance program, which requires precise information about the number and location of producers. Reilly said one of his main roles now is educating people about where their food comes from, and the census is a tremendous resource for that work. “More and more people are just not that familiar with agriculture,” Reilly said.

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Night at the opera

The spending: $40,000 to support the Seattle Opera’s production of Handel’s "Semele and the Wrath of Kino."

What Flake said: A die-hard Arizona Cardinals football fan, Flake quipped: “Here’s a pick for the next time Seattle is looking for a play to pass on.”

The explanation: The National Endowment for the Arts sets the amount and criteria for grant applications. In this case, the NEA was offering a $40,000 grant for "the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts." Seattle Opera chose its production of "Semele," said Seattle Opera Director Aidan Lang, because “we felt it would offer a broad opportunity for people in our community to connect with art -- which we believe truly matters.” He said many longtime opera lovers appreciated seeing an opera by the composer Handel, whose significant early works are rarely performed. "For newcomers to our art form, 'Semele' offered a compelling reason to give opera a try with its use of video and projection," Lang said. "We felt these innovative features would resonate in a city whose high-tech industries are leading its current rapid expansion."

Book 'em, Gaffney

The spending: $28,397 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to purchase a van for a library in Gaffney, S.C.

What Flake said: Flake was taken by the fact that Gaffney is the fictional hometown of Frank Underwood of the Netflix series “House of Cards.”

The response: According to the Cherokee County Public Library, the van is being used to expand the library’s outreach. It carries books and other library materials to rural communities, agencies that serve seniors, apartment complexes and day-care centers. The main goal is increasing the number of home-bound patrons the library serves and reaching at-risk populations. Library Director Ben Loftis said the driver of the bookmobile told him she noticed a woman who frequently checked out children’s books during stops. At first she figured the woman must be checking them out for children or grandchildren. Eventually, she learned the woman was reading the books herself in an attempt to teach herself to read. She is now reading adult fiction.

Jump the shark

The spending: $150,000 to Iowa State University for CT scans of sharks, rays and chimeras to create 3-D virtual skeletons.

What Flake said: “I can think of several reasons to not fund Cyclones (the mascot of Iowa State’s athletic programs) with sharks,” he said, seemingly referring to the campy "Sharknado" TV movies.

The response: Eliot Winer, associate professor at the Iowa State University College of Engineering, says he played a small part in a much larger research project that attempts to decipher the evolutionary relationship between and among species of sharks, rays and chimeras. This is one of many National Science Foundation-funded Tree of Life research projects that attempt to determine such relationships across all species. Winer developed medical-imaging software that can be used to construct 3-D images. Sharks are among the least evolved creatures but they also are among the most disease resistant, he said, especially to diseases of the brain such as Alzheimer’s. The chance to help with research that might eventually lead to greater understanding of these diseases was what “sold me to be part of the process,” Winer said.

A rose by any other name

The spending: $4.6 million from the Agriculture Department to study a plant disease affecting garden roses.

What Flake said: “Most egregious rose handout since Jake chose Vienna,” said Flake, referring to the television show “The Bachelor.”

The response: The USDA announced the five-year grant in October 2014 to combat rose rosette disease – a mite-borne viral disease threatening the U.S. landscape-rose industry. The funds were matched by the same amount of in-kind and cash contributions from major industry growers and breeders. The money was to be used to develop best-management practices, expand outreach and education efforts and to map genes in roses that are resistant to the disease. Roses account for about $400 million in domestically grown plant sales annually, according to Star Roses and Plants/Conard-Pyle.