On the recordSeptember 28, 2015
I introduced H.R. 3089, the Grants Oversight and New Efficiency, or GONE, Act, to bring much-needed accountability to the Federal grant- making process. This bipartisan bill requires each agency to report to Congress on the amount of expired and empty grant accounts that remain open on the government's books. Under the bill, the agencies must examine the 30 grants that have been expired for the longest period of time and explain why these grants have not been closed. One year after this initial report, these agencies will update Congress, reporting on which accounts previously identified have been closed and which remain open. These reports will help Congress better understand why expired grant accounts remain open at taxpayer expense. Mr. Speaker, in fiscal year 2014, Federal grant expenditures exceeded $529 billion, and that is real money. This enormous amount of money demands strong financial management to protect taxpayer dollars from waste. In 2012, GAO released a report on the timeliness of grant closeouts by Federal agencies. The report found nearly $1 billion remaining in undisbursed funds within expired grant accounts. Within one of the grant management systems GAO examined, there were almost 1,000 accounts that had been expired for 5 years or more and still had not been closed out. {time} 1545 GAO found out that this same management system contained 28,000 expired grant accounts with no funds in them. Mr.…
