Biden admin spent hefty sum of US tax dollars to upgrade embassy swimming pools in Iraq, Russia
"The Biden State Department threw a blowout summer pool party on your dime," Ernst, R-Iowa, said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
"Bureaucrats might think wasting millions is a drop in the bucket, but I am sick and tired of taxpayers getting tossed in the deep end by Washington," Ernst added. "I will continue working with the Trump administration to put a stop to the splashy spending of the Biden years."
Ernst's office found that the State Department under the Biden administration authorized that two pools in Haiti, five in Iraq, three in Sudan, one in Russia, one in Zimbabwe and one in Ghana be renovated, totaling more than $1.2 million, according to the New York Post, which first reported on the pool renovations on Thursday.
Taxpayers spent $41,259 to rehabilitate the pool at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in a contract inked three months after Russia invaded Ukraine in a war that has continued raging. The purchase order was dated June 3, 2022, through Aug. 15, 2022, after the war began in February that same year.
The U.S. embassy in Baghdad was awarded a whopping $444,000 to replace its indoor dehumidification system for its pool in a contract that began on Sept. 27, 2024. While the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq received over $10,000 to conduct mechanical repairs to its pool, according to the Ernst report reviewed by Fox News Digital.
In Sudan, taxpayers spent $24,000 in 2021 for the installation of a pool deck. Sudan has notably been under a State Department do not travel advisory "due to armed conflict, civil unrest, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping," with the embassy in Khartoum suspending operations in 2023 over the ongoing violent conflicts in the nation.
Some of the contracts detailed in the report have not been fully paid out, such as a $173,000 award to conduct work on a swimming pool in Indonesia at the embassy in Jakarta.
The federal government has previously been criticized for the amount of taxpayer funds spent on U.S. embassies overseas, including spending hefty sums on artwork under the Obama administration, Fox Digital reported at the time.
U.S. embassies are primarily funded through congressional appropriations to the U.S. Department of State.
Ernst's report follows months of the Department of Government Efficiency reporting it has saved the federal government billions of dollars amid its ongoing investigations into various federal agencies in search of corruption, overspending and mismanagement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been at the forefront of gutting departments and programs under State's purview, including shuttering USAID earlier in July for failing to ensure its programs actually supported America's interests.
"This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end. Under the Trump administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests. As of July 1st, USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance. Foreign assistance programs that align with administration policies – and which advance American interests – will be administered by the State Department, where they will be delivered with more accountability, strategy, and efficiency," Rubio said in comment regarding shuttering USAID.
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