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US Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana, decided to have a little fun in Congress today with his weekly speech on waste in federal programs.Coats, who is 72 years old, used his time on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon to talk about two federally funded studies that have particularly irked him in recent years, including one investigating whether people actually get "hangry."Coats explained to some of his equally senior colleagues: "Now I am told by my younger staff that there's a new word around called 'hangry.' I didn't know what that was. But hangry, as we've looked into this, means that if you are hungry, you tend to get a little bit disjointed and you're more angry than you were if you're not hungry."The Republican noted that several of the pages, high school students who help out senators by bringing them water and opening doors for them, were having a hard time holding back smiles as he explained to the chamber what the youths were talking about.But his larger point was that the National Science Foundation in 2014 gave out a $331,000 grant to study the "hanger" phenomenon, which involved handing voodoo dolls to married couples and comparing how many times they stuck the figures with pins with their blood sugar levels. The study is in fact real.Related: How Bernie Sanders Pulled Off a Huge Upset in Michigan and What It Means"After three years study and $331,000 spent, yup, we proved it. Hangry occurs when you're hungry," Coats said, standing next to a large poster of one of the voodoo dolls.
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During the same floor speech on Wednesday, Coats referenced a second study that he said has gotten a lot of attention from folks as he's talked about it. The federal government, he said, spent "well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars" on a study to determine whether a massage really does make a person feel better after "physical effort". Instead of using human subjects, an increasingly incensed and amused Coats pointed out, they used machines to massage rabbits."And then they look at either the grin on the rabbits -- I don't know how they determine -- the rabbits really couldn't turn around and say 'yeah, that feels good,'" Coats noted, adding that the study did find that massages work."I think they ought to be outraged, and I think a lot of people are outraged, about the way we're spending their money," he said.You can watch the full speech here.Follow Sarah Mimms on Twitter: @SarahMMimmsRelated: Biden Goes to Israel to Negotiate US Defense Aid in 'Tough Neighborhood'I have a fun — Senator Dan Coats (@SenDanCoats)March 9, 2016