[tanknetter]

And how recent is "recent"?

The Federal Government goes on a massive spending spree every late August through September as "end of year" money needs to be spent. Not spending money results in that money not only being returned to the treasury, but subsequent years' budgets reduced (OMB, etc, look at any surplus and project subsequent budgets down ... since an agency with a surplus just has too much money to begin with).

There are all sorts of stories about obscene quantities of "stuff" that gets purchased with EOY dollars. The one that really stands out to me is how DoD, in the late 1970s, bought something like 150 YEARS worth of mainframe punchcards in order to completely spend their budget.

[tanknetter]

Duh, the article is from late August. Definitely an EOY buy, nothing sinister involved, unless you consider abuse of taxpayer $$$ to be sinister ...

[RebelTXRose]

I forgot about all that...I wonder what they did with all those punch cards. disgusting disregard for the taxpayers.

Our NY gov just announced he is cutting payments to schools, hospitals, towns by 10%. The UNIONS are whining majorly and saying “we’ll sue!” If the money isn’t there, it isn’t there!

[ExSoldier]

Not spending money results in that money not only being returned to the treasury, but subsequent years' budgets reduced (OMB, etc, look at any surplus and project subsequent budgets down ... since an agency with a surplus just has too much money to begin with).

Spot on correct. That attitude extended to the supply lines in the military, especially in the areas of training ammo. If you requested "X" amount of ammo to qualify the battalion for M60 machine gun and you turned in "Y" amount as surplus after the qualification ranges went cold, you were ALWAYS shorted by exactly the surplus amount the next time out. It was always fun to be the senior range officer for those qualification days on every weapon in a light infantry outfit. Let the troops shoot then the range officers and safety officers get to burn up all the overages down range. Talk about your RAMBO fantasies! M60's and M2HB 50's were definitely the best, but the M203 grenade launcher was always a crowd pleaser, as well. M16 was a drag. Loading all those mags got to be a bore (pun?).