As Congress fights over the budget, agencies go on their ‘use it or lose it’ shopping sprees

Washington Post ^ | September 28, 2013 | David A. Fahrenthold

[trebb]

I sort of understand the printer cartridge thing. My printer uses them up like cotton candy at $75 per.

We do go through a lot of paper in these post-paper days.

The government punishes those who try to be good custodians of tax-payer money. If you have a year where you don't have a number of expenses because you have built up a supply or the last furniture is in place, your next year's budget will be cut because "you obviously don't need the money". On military bases, the units plan a budget. Come end-of-year time, the Group on the base will do a check and tell units that if they have extra by such-and-such date, it will be confiscated and put in a pool for units that may have already burned through their dough and have found even more creative ways to spend.

[Intolerant in NJ]

I’d try to identify what part of it was used for a “spending spree” and reduce the new budget by that amount anyway...the government mentality simply doesn't work that way - at another point I was running a program under the old federal CETA job training effort - we were advanced a certain amount of administrative funding outside the grant at the beginning of the year to purchase some supplies and equipment to get started - by the end of the year, in closing out the program, I had saved that amount from funding received as we went, and I contacted the CETA coordinator in our area to make arrangements to return it - "You're crazy" the voice on the other end of the line told me "nobody tries to return money to the government" - literally - obviously a slow learner.....