Do Federal Agencies Need to Close Accounts That Have Expired Grant Funding? (H.R. 3089)

What is H.R. 3089?

(Updated July 13, 2017)

This bill would direct federal agencies to prepare reports on efforts to close financial accounts related to expired federal grants. These accounts are closed when all administrative actions have been completed, including payments to grantees or payments from the grantee to the federal government.

Federal agencies are currently required to track grant accounts that have expired, so this legislation would slightly increase their workloads.

Argument in favor

More needs to be done to stop the waste of taxpayer dollars on maintaining expired and empty federal grant accounts.

Argument opposed

This is additional work for the agencies maintaining the grant accounts, and they’re already doing their best to close the expired accounts.

Impact

Federal agencies that manage grants and their employees.

Cost of H.R. 3089

The CBO estimates that this bill would increase administrative costs by $8 million over the 2016-2020 period, or about $1.6 million per year.

Additional Info

In-Depth: Sponsoring Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) believes it is essential that agencies stop wasting taxpayer dollars on empty grant accounts:

“Spending taxpayer dollars on expired and empty accounts is the definition of government waste. Fiscal mismanagement is sadly far too common in Washington but this bipartisan legislation takes common sense steps to ensure a more effective use of taxpayer resources.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in 2012 that found that there was more than $794 million in funding that remained in expired grant accounts. There were also 28,000 accounts that are empty and cost a total of $173,000 in monthly service fees or about $2 million annually.

Media:

• Sponsoring Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) Press Release
• CBO Cost Estimate