New bill aims to eliminate $100 billion year-end federal shopping spree

The Center Square ^ | Dec 31, 2019 | Bethany Blankley

[cgbg]

In the case of the Feds this is often Congress’ fault. In many cases in recent years they have not approved a budget until well into the fiscal year, so agencies don’t even know what they are working with for that year.

Agencies are also terrible at planning, and often change priorities based on the whims of political appointees.

Politics and budgets are a toxic mix.

Two year budgets were one proposed solution—and the benefits probably outweigh the problems with that approach.

[Kozak]

You will just push the spending spree earlier and they will be more likely to run out of money.

[IndispensableDestiny]

This article assumes federal agencies spend their funds proportionately through out the year, ie, the agency receives 120 million so they should spend 10 Million every month. It also assumes an agency gets their money at the beginning of the fiscal year, ie, October.

Exactly. There were times my agency would not receive full funding until April. It was difficult to get some high dollar contracts awarded by September, but we did it. Our obligation curve would look like a hockey stick. The bean counters hated it.

[GaryCrow]

"I recall one year when I was in the military my unit bought office furniture for the Col’s secretary for $9,000! But when we were doing weapons training we had to scrounge for spent brass and links to use in our training for loading/unloading our weapons."

That's another problem with military funding, you can have a ton of cash being thrown at one department while other more critical departments go unfunded.

I used to be an instructor on a Naval Air Station that trained student pilots. At that time the big push from above was to show how family friendly the military was and how well they took care of the families of service members. The family service center had several multi-million dollar expansions during my time there. Whenever a local news crew came on the base they were always directed to the family service center with their gleaming new buildings and furnishings to highlight how much was being done for military families. It was all a facade, the danged building was hardly used and there were about 30 civil servants that sat around playing solitaire on their computers all day bored out of their skulls, but to keep up appearances there's no telling how many millions of dollars a year their budget was. It was money that was basically thrown down the drain to virtue signal.

Meanwhile the training building had 1950's era desks with broken legs and projectors that didn't work. Training pilots was the supposed mission of the base but we couldn't get funding for the basic necessities while the family services division had money coming out their ears.

[trebb]

Blame the Congress - I ran a flight budget for years and if you see ways to save money, it ain’t gonna happen because by saving it one year, you are automatically cut back the following year...even if there are known new expenses or if the savings will not be fully possible the next year.
Base Commanders commandeer “residual” funds at the end of the year to ensure they are spent because if they don’t they will get dinged if any part of their realm is hampered by lack of money the next year.