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Coburn’s 2014 Wastebook: A $25 Billion Taxpayer Loss
Over the last five years, Sen. Tom Coburn, the retiring senior Republican Senator from Oklahoma and notorious deficit hawk, has released a massive annual report ripping into the federal government's spending habits. 
The much-anticipated "Wastebook" outlines what Coburn deems the top 100 "wasteful" federal projects that collectively cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year. 
The annual report is known for scrutinizing programs run by every major department, from the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs Department, to tiny obscure agencies like the National Technical Information Service--no one is immune from a feared mention in Coburn's "Wastebook. "
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In the fifth and final chapter of the report, which will likely retire along with the senator, Coburn highlights items totaling a collective $25 billion in "waste" including the Defense Department's $80 million "Iron Man" suit designed for soldiers on the battlefield but—as skeptics say--will likely serve as nothing more than a cool costume. 
There's also the $4.6 million the Customs and Border Patrol Spent on luxury homes for temporary border patrol agents, the billions of dollars the DoD plans to spend destroying $16 billion worth of unnecessary ammunition and the $1.5 million in taxpayer funded grants to help give a Disney luxury resort a makeover.
Coburn's report also includes the smaller ticket items like $450,000 that the Department of Homeland Security spent to cover some of its employees' high-end Washington, D.C. gym and spa memberships. It also targets the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars repairing golf courses instead of providing individual financial assistance to flood victims in Austin, Texas. 
The report also questions numerous research studies at the National Science Foundation--including one trial that involves teaching mountain lions to walk on treadmills. However, scientists and others caution that though some projects may seem "wacky" or "frivolous" they could be useful and should continue receiving federal funding.
Still, for his part Coburn says when going through the report, "Ask yourself: is each of these a true national priority or could the money have been better spent on a more urgent need or not spent at all in order to reduce the burden of debt being left to your children and grandchildren." 
Coburn, who announced his retirement last spring, is equally harsh on his fellow lawmakers—calling out Congress in this year's rep