A newly introduced bipartisan Senate bill (S-1329) seeks to improve the recovery of governmental assets by centralizing such efforts in the Treasury Department.
Under the proposed Recovering and Collecting Unclaimed Federal Property Act (RECOUP Act), Treasury could make such recoveries on behalf of other federal agencies, while retaining a portion of the amount recovered to cover the costs of locating and recovering those assets.
Currently, federal agencies “lack the expertise or funding to recover them. The RECOUP Act would address this problem by giving debt collection personnel at the U.S. Treasury Department the authority to recover government assets. These employees already have the knowledge and skills to do so,” said a statement by the sponsors.
They cited a Treasury estimate of $85 million in savings over 10 years.
