One Idaho farmer benefited from nearly $300,000 in Agriculture Department funds to market his potatoes, a new report claims.

By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON  As the budget deficit soared, infrastructure crumbled and the economy tanked, the federal government this year spent $300,000 for a California skateboarding park, $188,000 to research Maine lobsters and $3.2 million on a spy blimp the military doesn't want, according to a new report by the Senate's self-styled spending scourge.

The report, to be released today by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., lists more than $1.3 billion of what it calls wasteful projects in 2008.

Coburn, who often seeks to force votes and debates on projects inserted by fellow senators, says he wants to work with President-elect Barack Obama, who promised last month to go over the federal budget line by line and "eliminate programs we don't need."

"He has a great opportunity to change things, and my hope is that he will," Coburn said in an interview.

Obama and Coburn joined in 2006 on legislation that created USAspending.gov, which tracks federal spending.

• The federal Institute of Museums and Library Sciences awarded a $3,905 grant to the public library in Westfield, Ind., for the purchase of a Nintendo Wii console, a television, a camcorder and games.

• The Agriculture Department gave $298,068 to an Idaho farmer to help him advertise and market his specialty potatoes sold mainly to high-end restaurants.

• The Small Business Administration guaranteed $82 million in loans for 331 liquor stores, including Spanky's Liquor World and Pistol Pete's Beef N' Beer.

• Five members of Congress spent nearly $22,000 to stay three nights at a luxury hotel on the Galapagos Islands, the South American archipelago where Charles Darwin mulled his theory of evolution. That figure doesn't include the cost of the Air Force jet placed at their disposal.

"This is just an indication of how out of touch Washington is with the real world priorities of people in this country," Coburn said, adding that the report chronicled only a sliver of ill-advised federal spending. "How many bridges could we repair for $1.3 billion? … How many schools could be in better shape?"

According to the report, "Many of these low-priority projects are funded year after year, regardless of whether they achieve their intended effects or not."

That was the case with the Frank M. Charles Memorial Park in Queens, N.Y., the report says. The park received $1 million in 2008 to repair tennis courts and to install artificial turf on a baseball field. The same park got $1 million in 2000 for similar upgrades but failed to maintain the facilities, the report said.

Budget reform is "an imperative," Obama said when he announced his new budget director last month.

"We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of a politician, lobbyist or interest group," he said.

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