Guest Columns
Waste of the Day: Safe Landing for Earmark Money
In a story that adds new meaning to the question, “What color is your parachute?” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) earmarked $60,500 of taxpayers’ money to fund Dayton, Ohio’s Parachute Museum.
Topline: If federal officials ever need an emergency escape route from the debt crisis they’ve created, they will be in luck. The Institute of Museum and Library Services has already spent $60,500 to finance the Parachute Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
The Parachute Museum?
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the earmark for the Parachute Museum — which would be worth over $88,000 today.
Key facts: Visitors to Aviation Trail’s Parachute Museum can find “comprehensive information related to the design, fabrication and use of parachutes,” including videos and touchscreen exhibits.
The museum opened in 2003 but was not completed until 2010, thanks to funding secured by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio).
Congress banned federal earmarks for museums in 2024 and reissued the ban in 2025, recognizing that the funds were often wasteful or riddled with conflicts of interest. Perhaps the 2023 earmark from Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) was the wake-up call: he budgeted $2 million for a wax museum that features a statue of himself.
No one follows the rule
The new rule would be an excellent idea — if anyone actually followed it. Congress passed dozens of earmarks for museums in 2024 and requested dozens more for 2025.
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Summary: At this rate, Congress members will soon be able to open a museum about the hundreds of earmarks they have handed out to other museums.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
This article was originally published by RCI and made available via RealClearWire.
Jeremy Portnoy, former reporting intern at Open the Books, is now a full-fledged investigative journalist at that organization. With the death of founder Adam Andrzejewki, he has taken over the Waste of the Day column.
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