{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-calls-out-nsf-wasting-money-duplicative-study-measurement-latest-waste-report/", "Sen. Rand Paul Calls Out NSF for Wasting Money on Duplicative Study Measurement in Latest \u2018The Waste Report\u2019", "2015-06-22", "2015", "2015-06", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Rand Paul today released the newest edition to \u2018The Waste Report.\u2019 \u2018The Waste Report\u2019 is an ongoing project to catalog egregious examples of wasteful spending throughout the U.S. government.\n\nThis week\u2019s edition of \u2018The Waste Report,\u2019 uncovers millions of dollars spent each year by the U.S. government on an office to promote and study weight and measurement in relation to the metric system. Incongruously, the government is also spending $188,000 to fund a university professor to write a book to explain why Americans cannot adapt to using the metric system.\n\n\u2018The Waste Report\u2019 can be found HERE or below.\n\nThe U.S. National Science Foundation \u2013 Measuring Waste\n\nA teacher may have tried to teach you the metric system, but you probably still do not know what a 22? C temperature or 10K run really means.\n\nNow the National Science Foundation is spending $188,000 to fund a university professor to write a book on \u201cThe Measure of Modernity: Standards and Standardization in the United States.\u201d[1] The grant synopsis notes, \u201cA comprehensive history of standards and standardization in America does not exist\u2026\u201d The reasoning may be found elsewhere in the synopsis where it says, \u201cthey [measurements and standards] are quite pervasive but rarely appreciated.\u201d[2]\n\nWhile measurements and standard may be rarely appreciated, the U.S. government does spend millions of dollars each year on an office to promote and study weight and measurement, the Office of Weights and Measures at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. One of their functions is to promote broader acceptance of the metric system in the United Sates.[3]\n\nIn fact, the U.S. government has been promoting the metric system for 140 years. Why? Well, it would probably surprise most Americans to know that in 1875, the U.S. became a party to the Treaty of the Meter which officially put the United States on the metric system. But official or not, as was observed by the Monroe Administration in 1821, the free-market had caused a coalescence around a relatively uniform system of measurement, the American Customary System.[4]\n\nAs to a history of measurement, the Office of Weights and Measures has an array of publication about the subject, including, Weights and Measurements of the United States: A Brief History.[5] While little has developed to prompt an update of this publication since 1975, if we need an updated history, they are the ones to do it.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T20:17:59Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-calls-out-nsf-wasting-money-duplicative-study-measurement-latest-waste-report/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.505702966824174, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}