Senator Tom Coburn's Wastebook 2014: Government's Questionable Spending

Washington is often accused of doing nothing, and the current Congress is on track to be one of the least productive in history.

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn released his final Wastebook report Wednesday.

One government program spent $190,000 to study compost digested by worms. Another $856,000 went to train mountain lions to walk on treadmills, $10,000 for an Oregon children's theater production of "Zombie in Love" and $46,000 for a snowmobile competition in Michigan. Also, $414,000 was spent to update an Army video game meant to spur recruitment, a project already more than $25 million over budget.

One of the programs featured in Wastebook 2014 is a $500,000 grant to the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town in Okfuskee County to subsidize the farming of butterflies.

These expenses all feature in Senator Coburn's annual "Wastebook," a ranking of 2014's top 100 worst examples of government waste, including out-of-this-world spending on research projects designed by grade school students to be sent to the International Space Station.

Read Coburn's Wastebook 2014 report

"Laughing classes -- we're paying people to understand -- to teach people how to laugh, there's a lot of serious problems in this country, well maybe the reason people aren't laughing is because the government's so inept," Coburn said.

Coburn, who's retiring later this year, has been producing the Wastebook for five years. He said it's making a difference.

"We should be ashamed that we're wasting money the way that we are," Coburn said. "So if we're watching and we're holding people accountable, we'll get better value for the taxes that we pay and we won't risk the future of our kids."