Sen. Rand Paul put Hollywood in the spotlight Monday revealing a $25,000 federal grant billing taxpayers for the building of an Oscars museum.
The National Endowment for the Arts is sending the federal dollars to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science to help build what the academy claims as the “world’s premier museum” exploring the history and future of movies.
The Kentucky Republican revealed the spending in his latest “Waste Report,” which he uses to publicly uncover “egregious” instances of excessive government spending.
“$25,000 might be small in the scope of the federal budget or in Hollywood, it is over half what the average worker makes in a year, and equals the full federal tax liability of almost four average Americans,” Paul said in the report.
He questioned why the government would send the chunk of money to the academy given the group’s “abundance of wealth.”
“In addition to scores of Hollywood brass ponying up donations to the museum, the academy is flush with cash; it makes profits of roughly $50 million on the Oscars alone,” Paul said.
The museum, set to open in 2017, will receive the grant to subsidize planning for its exhibits. Paul highlights the museum will include a space shuttle from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which he said the academy bought for a “cool” $344,000.
“One must wonder, when cries ring out about what constitutes a fair share of taxes for someone to pay, why are any of those tax dollars going to support a museum that does not need it?” Paul said.
