Grants Oversight and New Efficiency Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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.

GAO found out that this same management system contained 28,000 expired grant accounts with no funds in them. Mr. Speaker, expired grant accounts create multiple levels of waste.

First, the undisbursed funds remaining in expired accounts could be better used for their appropriated purpose or returned to the Treasury to help bring down the deficit and mounting debt.

Second, agencies pay a monthly fee for each account that remains open within the Federal payment management system. As a result, agencies could be spending roughly $2 million per year to maintain these 28,000 accounts with no funds in them, assuming they have not been closed. Surely we can find a better use for these taxpayer dollars rather than wasting funds maintaining expired accounts.

Finally, grants that are not properly closed out slow the grant-making agency from conducting the necessary oversight to ensure that funds were properly spent and that taxpayer money is not being wasted. The GONE Act is a response to these issues.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3089 utilizes the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate with agencies to provide these reports to Congress. HHS was chosen for this role because of some of its successful closeout efforts implemented in 2011. HHS's commendable work on grant closeout is exactly why we added a provision to this bill requiring HHS to coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget in reporting to Congress on legislative changes needed to improve the process of grants administration.

H.R. 3089 strengthens oversight by asking the inspectors general of the largest grant-making agencies to conduct a risk assessment of their agency's grant closeout processes.

I thank Senators FISCHER and MANCHIN for their work on the Senate companion bill, S. 1115, including their work on the bill before the House today.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to bring some commonsense steps to the Federal grant-making process by supporting this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. WALBERG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his support and leadership on the floor. I thank the chairman and ranking member of our committee. Most importantly, I thank my good friend and colleague from Michigan, Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, for her support and helpful additions to this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this commonsense bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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