While Congress frets over a government shutdown, federal bureaucrats are engaged in a spending frenzy as the clock ticks toward the end of the fiscal year.
The Washington Post reports that the annual tradition of “use it or lose” spending is in its final hours, and it appears the buying frenzy by federal agencies will meet or exceed the end-of- September spike experienced over the past three years.
The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold found that in fiscal years 2010-12, each time the feds spent more than $40 billion in the final week. In 2012, for example, the departments spent 9 percent of the entire years’ worth of expenditures in the last week leading up to the Sept. 30 end to the fiscal year.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of Congress’ leading watchdogs of wasteful federal spending, said that agencies are always concerned that they will create a new, lower benchmark for their budget if they don’t spend it all. Coburn told Fahrenthold: “… Instead of being praised for not spending all your money, you get cut for not spending all your money. And so we’ve got a perverse incentive in there.”
Here’s a portion of the Post report:
“This past week, the Department of Veterans Affairs bought $562,000 worth of artwork.
“In a single day, the Agriculture Department spent $144,000 on toner cartridges.
“And in a single purchase, the Coast Guard spent $178,000 on ‘Cubicle Furniture Rehab,’” which apparently amounted to nothing more than replacing a bunch of office cubicles with a more modern version.
The graphs below, created by the Post, show these spending patterns in detail:
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