The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

Just in time for some light — and potentially infuriating — long weekend reading, Senator Rand Paul’s latest waste report is out for fall 2019.

In total, this fall edition of the report found over $230,000,000 in wasted American tax dollars, including such public expenditures as:

• Over $700,000 in funding for a study in London that involves getting zebrafish addicted to nicotine.
• $84,375 for an original Bob Dylan statue to go at the U.S. embassy in Mozambique.
• $300,000 for debate and Model United Nations competitions in Afghanistan.
• $4,658,865 on research studying the relationship between alcohol use and emergency room visits.
• $22,000,000 spent helping to bring Serbian-made cheese up to international standards.

Meanwhile, America’s national debt just keeps on growing with no apparent end in sight, topping $23 trillion for the first time in history at the beginning of November. And federal spending for the last 2.5 years is 13 percent higher than it was during the same time span under President Obama.

War is many things, and one of those things is expensive. A new academic study shows just how expensive the war on terror has been for the United States over the past 18 years, placing the total taxpayer cost at $6.4 trillion.

In order to tabulate the total cost of post-9/11 anti-terror operations since late 2001, the report — which was published last week by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University — takes into account not only the costs of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, but also military operations in other countries, costs incurred by the Department of Homeland Security, and the public cost of taking care of the medical and disability issues faced by post-9/11 veterans.

"The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries — becoming a truly 'global war on terror,'" the summary explains. "Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks."

To put that $6.4 trillion figure in context, that is 103,330,803 times the annual U.S. median household income of $61,937, meaning that it would take the annual median salaries of more than 100 million American households to cover the cost of the United States' Middle East and Asia involvement over the past 18 years as estimated by the report.

Furthermore, this figure is $2 trillion more than the entire U.S. federal government spent in fiscal year 2019, which was $4.44 trillion according to the Treasury Department.

A similar cost estimate put out by the Watson Institute in November 2018 estimated a total cost of $5.9 trillion, representing an estimated $500 billion price tag for the previous fiscal year.

The report's summary also explains that costs to American taxpayers resulting form the war on terror would keep adding up even if the U.S. were to cease its military operations in the Middle East and elsewhere by the end of this fiscal year. This is because, it says, of the ongoing cost of veterans' care and also because "the increases in the Pentagon base budget associated with the wars are likely to remain, inflating the military budget over the long run."

Meanwhile, the United States' national debt continues to grow with no end in sight, topping $23 trillion for the first time in history at the beginning of November. Furthermore, the budget deficit for October grew 34 percent over the previous year, which puts the country on course to hit a trillion-dollar deficit this fiscal year.

The U.S. national debt has now reached 110 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

What is the national debt?

The federal deficit has been skyrocketing year over year during the Trump administration. According to data published by the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the federal deficit passed $1 trillion between 2009 and 2012 as the government employed anti-recession measures. By 2013 it had dropped to $678 billion, then fell even further the following year to $484 billion. The last year that the federal government ran a surplus was in 2001.

• 2013: $678 billion
• 2014: $484 billion
• 2015: $442 billion
• 2016: $585 billion
• 2017: $665 billion
• 2018: $779 billion

The OMB expects this deficit to pass the $1 trillion mark during this fiscal year and remain there until at least 2022.

• 2019: $1.092 trillion (estimate)
• 2020: $1.101 trillion (estimate)
• 2021: $1.068 trillion (estimate)
• 2022: $1.049 trillion (estimate)

The Congressional Budget Office has slightly more modest estimates, predicting in its August report that the deficit will hit $960 billion by the end of the 2019 fiscal year on Sept. 30, then average "$1.2 trillion between 2020 and 2029."

What happened now?

Thanks to the deficit, the national debt has now reached 110 percent of the GDP. CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller noted that this is the "Largest Debt to GDP ratio since 118.9% at the end of WWII," a number confirmed by the Congressional Research Service.

The national debt currently sits at $22.5 trillion. At the end of 2008 when former President Barack Obama was first elected, the national debt sat at $10 trillion. In 2016 when Trump was elected to succeed Obama, it was $19.6 trillion.

The U.S. GDP for the second quarter of this fiscal year was revised down to a 2 percent increase, down from 3.1 percent the previous quarter.

During his campaign, Trump promised to do away with the debt

In March 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump told the Washington Post that he would eliminate the entire national debt "over a period of eight years" (assuming a two-term presidency). He said that he would be able to do that by "renegotiating all of our [foreign trade] deals."

The following month he told Fortune that he could pay off "a percentage" of the debt, but that he would "rather not be so aggressive" in getting rid of it because "we have to rebuild the infrastructure of our country." He stressed, though, that "we have to reduce our debt."