One Way the Government Wastes $100 Billion

The national debt just eclipsed $22 trillion, so wasting $100 billion per year seems small in comparison, but a government watchdog says federal agencies are wasting huge sums of money to ensure they keep getting even more.It's called "use it or lose it" spending.  Agencies get a certain amount of money allotted each year in federal spending, and as the fiscal year draws to a close, the spending tends to ramp up dramatically."The federal agency heads spend down their budgets this year so they get the same or more money appropriated by Congress for the next year," said Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO at openthebooks.com.In September 2018 alone, Andrzejewski reports that federal agencies shelled out nearly $100 billion.  Twenty percent of of the annual budget went towards this spending."In the last week, federal agencies spent $53 billion on contracts.  This was roughly one out of every ten dollars spent on the year was spent on this last week," said Andrzejewski.Listen to the full podcast as Andrzejewski offers examples of how that taxpayer money was spent at the end of the year and what he thinks of President Trump's budget blueprint that calls for a five percent spending cut in Fiscal Year 2020.