FatCratz are on the Hill

For those of you outside the beltway, it is a very bad thing for a FatCrat to come in under budget. Money left unspent is not "saved," in the sense that the FatCrat can spend it next year. If it's left on the table, it's lost, or, in some instances, if it can be carried over, it still moves your budget baseline lower for the following year. Whoever sets the budget--Congress, OMB, agency or division heads--will presume you don't need as much money the following year to do the same work.

As a result, one of the rites of fall is end-of-fiscal-year budget blowout. If you got it, spend it.

I of course have many, but one I remember is at the end of the fiscal year when we had a lot of left over money in our budget the Congressman I was working for had us buy new T.V.'s, new DVD players, ridiculous amounts of office supplies, and office decor just to use up the money. None of this was needed and in fact we had just bought new t.v.'s the year before!

This is bad enough, but I'd love some better examples of this. I'm sure they exist. Or perhaps you know some tricks of the trade for funneling these dollars around so they can be spent later. That would be both entertaining, and helpful for other budget officers come the end of this fiscal year. FatCratz will face some major challenges spending all their appropriated money this year.

Note, importantly, that this example comes from the Hill. Hill staffers like to think of themselves as the watchdogs, but whose watching them? We are.