{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=3eb38d48-c11d-4ea5-9ee5-94a9dd772209", "Your Tax Dollars...Down The Drain: NSF Spends $350,000 to Help Golfers Putt Better", "2013-11-20", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "OH", "Rob Portman", "P000449", "www.portman.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) today released the following statement in a monthly series highlighting Washington\u2019s wasteful spending during a time of record debt and deficits:\r\nIn just the latest example of wasteful spending, this month\u2019s example of government waste comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which spent $350,000 on a study intended to help golfers improve their scores.  \u00a0  \u201cFew things frustrate golfers as much as navigating their way from the tee towards the hole, only to miss a short putt.\u00a0 Maybe they will rest easier knowing that Washington is on the case to improve their scores, spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a study to show that golfers can increase their chance of sinking their putts by imagining that the hole is bigger.\u00a0 Perhaps Washington has similarly failed to rein in its out-of-control spending because too many perceive the hole in the federal budget to be small.\u00a0 Acknowledging that the current national debt now tops $140,000 per household may help the federal government better ace its spending restraint,\u201d said Portman.\u00a0 \u201cI re-read my copy of the U.S. Constitution, and I still cannot find the section empowering Washington to spend tax dollars on golf tips.\u00a0 While $350,000 may not seem like much money in Washington, there are families, businesses, and higher-priority government programs that surely could have used that money.\u201d\r\nThe Purdue University study \u2013 funded by a portion of this $350,000 NSF grant as well as National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding \u2013 asked 36 golfers to putt towards two different-sized holes.\u00a0 Lighting was used to alter their perceptions of hole sizes.\u00a0 Simply making the smaller hole appear to be larger resulted in golfers shooting more successfully.\r\nTaxpayers may not be finished with their investment:\u00a0 \u201cMore work is needed to better understand this effect, but we think the perceived increase in target size will boost confidence in one's abilities,\u201d said Jessica K. Witt, a Purdue University professor who led the study.\u00a0 She added that \u201cA future goal is to develop techniques to help athletes see their target differently.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "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.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=3eb38d48-c11d-4ea5-9ee5-94a9dd772209"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6167010180652142, "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"}