Bill offers feds $10,000 to report wasteful spending

The newly introduced bill could curb \"agency bloat\" and the tendency for them to spend frivolously at the end of the year, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of...

By Dena Levitz
Federal News Radio

Bonuses may be in the cards for a select group of federal workers: those who find and report wasteful or fraudulent spending.

The financial rewards are the crux of The Bonuses for Cost-Cutters Act of 2015, which was introduced Tuesday by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) The bill expands upon an existing law and would allow for U.S. government inspectors general to give out bonus amounts up to $10,000 to employees who identify unneeded or surplus funds within their agencies.

Warner said in a press release that the proposal “encourages federal agencies to return unused funds instead of rushing to spend-down their appropriations at the end of every fiscal year.”

As it is now, federal agencies’ spending during the final week of the fiscal year is almost five times higher than the weekly average throughout the rest of the year; at the same time, research shows that the quality of spending in that last- minute rush is lower.

Paul said he believes The Bonuses for Cost-Cutters Act would “reduce the federal deficit and reverse the trend toward agency bloat.”

“Under the current law, federal employees have a perverse incentive to spend all of their agency’s annual budget before the end of the year, and subsequently, bonuses will reverse the incentive to the benefit of the employee and the taxpayer,” he said.

The proposal is, so far, being endorsed by the National Taxpayers Union and Citizens Against Government Waste.

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