Spending Money as Fast as They Can

There are children who do not have health insurance. There are elderly who can't afford medications to keep them alive. There are people lost in the middle who only need to be taught a few valuable life skills in order to keep them off the streets. There are crack babies born that will never make it to childhood, because there is no money to get them the treatment they need. There are teenagers lost in foster care, convinced that no one gives a damn what happens to them. There are people dying of diseases that we can cure, dying because they can't afford medical treatment and don't have insurance.

And this is how our government is spending our money (from MSNBC.com):

• $66,000 for the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation in DC
• $387,976 for Manure Management research (National Swine Research Center) in Ames, Iowa.
• $16 million on southern pine beetle forest health initiative
• $2.5 million for cotton research in Texas.
• $940,000 for brown tree snake management in Guam.
• $373,824 for Grapefruit Juice/Drug Interaction research in Temple, Texas.
• $390,101 for Honey Bee Research (Varroa Mites) in Baton Rouge, LA.
• $1.5 million for construction of an entrance off Bladensburg Rd for the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.
• $1 million for Florida Department of Citrus Abscission Chemical Studies.
• $1 million for Iowa State University project on mitigating emissions from egg farms. (my note: are they talking about bird's passing gas here?)

I'm not pointing fingers at either side on this one, because Democrats are just as good at getting money for their pet projects as anyone else. And some of the projects on the original list are worth funding.
And some of them are just a way to get money.
The 10 items I listed above total $24,157,901. What could you do with that kind of money?