Wednesday, April 24, 2013

$890,000 here, $890,000 there

If you had zero dollars in a bank account for a good period of time, wouldn't you close it, especially if the bank was charging you a fee every month.  Our federal government doesn't do that. There are 13,172 federal accounts with a balance of zero dollars. We pay $65 per year to keep each account open.  This costs you and me $890,000 each year.  Yes, this is chickenfeed in the federal world, but when federal workers are being furloughed, that $890,000 could pay probably 6 or 7 people, some of whom could actually help reduce the current airline delays due to the furloughed FAA staff.

OMB has been trying to close these accounts for years and has made progress; in 2011 there were 28,000 zero balance accounts.

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