Boondoggle

The project is over budget and unnecessary. It is a complete boondoggle.

Opponents consider this another billion-dollar government boondoggle.

Senator John Stennis […] has been active and effective for so long as a member of the Armed Services Committee that he knows as well as any man can where the bodies are buried in the Pentagon and the boondoggles are buried in the defense budget.

By its strictest definition, a boondoggle is a recreational trip out of town, but it has been blurred by threadbare jokes to mean any trip that is desirable, whether for work or not.

“Oh, for the-- how much did you waste on that little boondoggle?” “Well, it's not that so much as--” “Krieger.” “Well, I needed ballast, and what better to simulate bricks of cocaine than, you know, bricks of cocaine.”

Klein dismantles the boondoggle that is cap and trade.

For cynics, it is a boondoggle plagued by delays (it began in 2007 and was supposed to begin experiments in 2016, but this will not now happen until 2025), questionable management and ballooning costs (double the original estimate).

A non-work excursion away from the station in US Antarctic English is a “boondoggle”, or a “jolly” for the Britons.