Senator Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, has released his latest "wastebook" detailing what he describes as wasteful federal spending. The report has attracted press coverage in the New York Post (here), Politico (here) and Fox News (here). Among the expenditures were $630,000 to buy followers for the State Department's Facebook and Twitter accounts and "$325,525 for a National Institutes of Health study that found wives would be happier if they could calm down faster during arguments with their husbands."
NPR, meanwhile, covers the news by reminding listeners, in its own voice, that the wasteful spending highlighted by Senator Coburn and his staff is "about 0.7 percent of the $3.8 trillion the federal government spent for the year," thus turning a story about wasteful spending into one trying to make the point that only a tiny fraction of government spending is wasteful.