WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Rand Paul today released the latest edition of ‘The Waste Report,’ which is an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.

In the latest edition of ‘The Waste Report,’ Sen. Paul uncovers plans for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to invest as much as $24.7 million on a project to help the country of the Philippines adapt to climate change.

‘The Waste Report’ can be found HERE or below.

Followers of The Waste Report will remember the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding for a futuristic climate change video game focused on the impact of Florida communities of sea-level rise. The justification for the game was that high school students, when presented with the catastrophic climate change narrative, were not particularly motivated to act. Well it turns out Uncle Sam wants to act, not in Florida, but in the Philippines.

That’s right!!! The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) plans to invest as much as $24.7 million as part of the “Climate Ready” project to help the Philippines adapt to rising sea-levels and extreme weather caused by climate change.[1] Individual awards are limited to $2 million, so we’ll probably see about 12 different projects across the Philippines.

So what will these projects look like? Turns out we do not know. USAID’s solicitation is an RFP (Request for Proposals) for cost-plus contracts. RFP’s are used at all levels of government to solicit detailed plans of how to achieve stated objectives and working within established constraints. For example, if your local town wanted to build a park on an abandoned lot, an RFP might give general parameters of what kind of park – recreational or passive – and what features are desired and what are not, etc. Kind of a, “given these parameters, what would you do?”

However, where this RFP would normally delineate such parameters, it simply states, “the Contractor’s Performance Work Statement, based on the content of this RFP, will be inserted at the time of award.”[2] In other words, submit any idea to prepare the Philippines for climate change, and if it is accepted, that idea will be the standard we hold that idea to.

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