Deb Fischer: “I rise today to introduce the Grants Oversight and New Efficiency Act or the GONE Act. This legislation would require…”

“I rise today to introduce the Grants Oversight and New Efficiency Act or the GONE Act. This legislation would require federal agencies to close out expired grant accounts with an empty balance. ``U.S. government spends $890,000 on nothing''--it sounds like a bad joke, but it is no laughing matter. The Washington Post recently reported, ``This year, the government will spend at least $890,000 on service fees for bank accounts that are empty. At last count, Uncle Sam has 13,712 such accounts with a balance of zero.'' According to an official government report, the Government Accountability Office, GA0, reported last year that the Payment Management System, the largest civilian payment system for grants managed by the Department of Health and Services, was charged $173,000 to maintain the Department of Health and Human Services' 28,000 expired grant accounts with a zero balance. Furthermore, the GAO estimates that if federal agencies were billed for the entire year, maintaining expired grant accounts with a zero balance for the entire year would cost $2 million in fees. To tackle this problem, I am introducing the GONE Act, a bill with a commonsense goal: to increase accountability.…”