The Waste Report — Archive
A repository of the congressional waste catalogs. Each edition links to its official source and to our archived copy, because official pages for departed members get taken down — a citation that 404s is not a citation.
Wastebook 2010?2014
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) — The original annual catalog of federal spending its author judged wasteful, redundant, or unjustifiable. The direct ancestor of the reports that followed.
Coburn published the annual Wastebook from 2010 until his 2015 retirement. He died March 28, 2020. His Senate site (coburn.senate.gov) has been taken down; these copies come from his congressional papers archive at Oklahoma State University.
| Edition | Source posted | Provenance | Size | Archived copy | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wastebook 2014 | Oct 2014 | archived original | 15.9 MB | open | source |
| Wastebook 2013 | Dec 2013 | archived original | 7.8 MB | open | source |
| Wastebook 2012 | Oct 2012 | archived original | 9.2 MB | open | source |
| Wastebook 2011 | Dec 2011 | archived original | 2.8 MB | open | source |
| Wastebook 2010 | Nov 2010 | archived original | 3.0 MB | open | source |
Wastebook (continued) 2015?2018
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — Flake continued the Wastebook series after Coburn retired, alongside companion oversight reports. Originals were hosted on flake.senate.gov, which came down when he left the Senate in 2019; these are Internet Archive captures of those original government URLs.
Flake continued the Wastebook series after Coburn retired.
| Edition | Source posted | Provenance | Size | Archived copy | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wastebook: PORKemon Go Wastebook edition (2016) |
Jan 2017 | archived original | 15.8 MB | open | source |
| Wastebook: The Farce Awakens Wastebook edition (2015) |
Dec 2015 | archived original | 21.0 MB | open | source |
| Tackling Paid Patriotism companion oversight report |
Nov 2015 | archived original | 6.0 MB | open | source |
| Jurassic Pork companion oversight report |
Jun 2015 | archived original | 2.4 MB | open | source |
The Waste Report 2017?present
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — The current running catalog of federal spending its author judges wasteful. Referred to as the Penalty Box in the Playbook.
Ongoing. Published on the senator's official Senate site.
| Edition | Source posted | Provenance | Size | Archived copy | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Festivus Report 2024 | Feb 2025 | official | 2.4 MB | open | source |
| Festivus 23 | Feb 2023 | official | 2.8 MB | open | source |
| Festivus 2023 | — | official | 3.5 MB | open | source |
Inclusion here is not this site's judgment that any listed item is waste — these are archived copies of documents published by their named authors, reproduced so the record stays reachable. Each author's reasoning is their own and stays in their document.
Provenance is labeled on every row. Official means we retrieved it from the author's government site. Archived original means a web-archive capture of that original government URL. Third-party mirror means neither — the document is reproduced because no government copy remains reachable, and the chain of custody is weaker. We label it rather than quietly blending it in.