Sen. Ernst Demands Agencies Stop End-of-Year Spending Sprees
She expects a repeat of that performance come September.
“The federal government ends every fiscal year with a mountain of unspent money. The total for last year added up to more than $800 billion! And 2021 is expected to be nearly the same, with all of that taxpayer cash sitting idle and for no purpose,” Ernst said in a statement naming the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as the latest recipient of her monthly Squeal Award.
She selected OMB because it refuses to make public the annual spending requests and justifications that the White House agency receives from federal agencies. Ernst believes making those justifications public would be an incentive against wasteful end-of-year spending by agency officials who fear their budgets will be cut by Congress if they don’t spend it all.