Image: Peshkova/Shutterstock.com
The bipartisan leaders of a Senate committee and its subcommittee on government contracting have asked more than a dozen major agencies for briefings on their fiscal year-end spending, in light of prior hearings and reports by GAO and others pointing to increased levels of spending annually in the final fiscal quarter, which ends each September 30.
“With only limited time left in the current fiscal year, eight of the ten highest-spending federal agencies have not used as much as 40 percent of their budgets,” said a letter from leaders of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Some observers have raised concerns that this year’s annual spending binge could be the biggest yet.”
“Last fiscal year, agencies spent a total of $11.1 billion in the final week of the fiscal year–almost five times higher than the average weekly spending during the rest of the year,” they said in a letter to DoD, Treasury, VA, DHS, Energy and others.
Federal agency officials commonly acknowledge the spending increase in the final fiscal quarter but cite as a reason the time needed to award contracts with money allotted in their budgets – which they say is further stretched by lingering uncertainty regarding their budgets as Congress regularly fails to enact budgets before October 1 each year.