Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst will introduce a bill on Wednesday to fight bureaucratic waste by enforcing an annual audit of federal spending.
The End-of-Year Fiscal Responsibility Act will force federal agencies to audit themselves no later than 60 days after the end of the fiscal year, requiring a line-by-line report of spending to a public website. The legislation also states that any money spent by agencies in the two months before the end of each fiscal year cannot exceed the average amount spent in the other 10 months of the fiscal year.
The senator previously introduced the Reviewing Every Check and Each Invoice Purchasing Troops’ Supplies (RECEIPTS) Act in early February, demanding a “clean audit” of Department of War (DoW) spending by 2028 and directing the use of artificial intelligence in the process. This bill, Ernst told the DCNF, will allow agencies to “prioritize what they truly need.”
“Instead of incentivizing ‘Christmas in September,’ my End-Of-Year Fiscal Responsibility Act would help each agency prioritize what they truly need, like putting our troops first year-round, instead of shoveling money out the door at the end of each fiscal year,” Ernst told the DCNF.
The DoW spent a staggering $93 billion in September 2025 under federal “use-it-or-lose-it” rules, which forces federal agencies to spend their budget or risk losing funding in the next fiscal year. “The ‘use-it or lose-it’ model has encouraged government bureaucrats’ spending sprees for decades,” Ernst told the DCNF. “Forget shopping until you drop – bureaucrats need to ring up a healthy dose of accountability for how they use Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”
The Trump administration has worked to cut the size of the federal government in the last year. President Donald Trump’s efforts shrank the federal government’s workforce to its smallest size in more than a decade in December 2025. The State Department also cut nearly $2 billion in spending in its first year alone. The House of Representatives, in contrast, passed $1.3 trillion in funding for government agencies across two bills in January 2026.
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