Binge Spending by Government Bureaucrats

Every September, U.S. government bureaucrats go on a spending spree to burn through all of the money that they’ve been approved to spend by Congress before the federal government’s fiscal year ends at the end of the month.

2018 is no different, except for the magnitude of this year’s federal spend-a-thon, where the bipartisan budget deal signed by President Trump in February authorized a lot more spending than would have happened without the deal.

Given that kind of license to spend, a lot of bureaucrats are now making a lot of really questionable purchases using your tax dollars and money they’ve had to borrow just to spend as much as they’re now allowed to spend. Elizabeth Harrington of the Washington Free Beacon reports on some of the more wasteful ways that Washington D.C.’s bureaucrats spent money before the clock on the 2017 fiscal year ran out last September.

Federal agencies spent millions on cars, scooters, fidget spinners, and shuffleboards in an attempt to exhaust their budgets before they run out at the end of the fiscal year.

An analysis of federal spending by OpenTheBooks.com and shared with the Washington Free Beacon reveals 67 agencies and departments spend nearly $50 billion closing out their fiscal year 2017 budgets.

The “spending frenzy” totaled nearly $50 billion in seven days.

And that was during the last seven days of September 2017, where federal bureaucrats spent $1 of every $9 that the U.S. Congress had authorized for them to spend in the entire 2017 fiscal year.

In 2018, the numbers are going to be even bigger!

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Craig Eyermann is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and the creator of the Government Cost Calculator at MyGovCost.org.