public-spending
Every record this desk has filed under public-spending, newest first, each with the number of sources it can still show you.
The FAA is rebuilding air traffic control on a three-year clock with $12.5 billion, and GAO says it has no full cost estimate and no single schedule — just 11,389 separate project schedules that do not connect.
GAO reported on September 14 on the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, the FAA's effort, announced in May 2025, to replace the radios, radars, telecommunications and displays controllers use to manage up to 45,000 flights a day. Congress appropriated $12.5 billion in July 2025. The first phase is due by December 2028 and is now projected at $10.6 billion; the second, replacing the core automation, needs about $10.2 billion more and has no start or finish date. GAO found the FAA has no comprehensive lifecycle cost estimate, after a blanket waiver exempted the program from nearly all of its own acquisition rules, and no integrated schedule to show whether 11,389 separate project timelines collide. Progress is real: about half the old copper lines have been replaced with fibre. GAO's conclusion: the FAA 'is buying delivery speed at the risk of cost uncertainty and potential disruptions.'
Also filed undergaofaaair-traffic-controlaviationinfrastructure
DHS terminated 362 grants and pulled back about $1 billion in 2025. GAO found some disaster-mitigation projects delayed by nearly a year — and the department taking the same approach again without writing down what it learned.
A February 2025 executive order directed agencies to consult the U.S. DOGE Service and review grants for termination within 30 days. GAO's September 17 report on what followed at the Department of Homeland Security: all obligated grant disbursement paused in February 2025, then 362 grants terminated and about $1 billion deobligated across four DHS components, plus new requirements imposed on remaining recipients. GAO found the approach 'made it difficult to execute grant programs' — some disaster mitigation projects were delayed by nearly a year. The recommendation is not that the terminations were wrong. It is that DHS is continuing to take similar actions and has not incorporated what this round taught it.
Also filed undergaodhsgrantsdisaster-mitigation
There are 140 federal economic development programs run by 13 agencies, worth about $60 billion a year. GAO checked 29 of them against four run by the agency whose whole job this is: all 29 overlapped, and 20 overlapped on everything.
GAO identified 140 federal economic development programs administered by 13 agencies; the 131 that reported obligations put them at about $60 billion in fiscal 2024. To measure overlap it compared four Economic Development Administration programs against 29 programs run elsewhere, on three dimensions — activities, beneficiaries, purpose. Every one of the 29 overlapped on at least one dimension, and 20 overlapped on all three. EDA is the only federal agency focused solely on economic development and is required to coordinate with the others; GAO reports that collaboration has stalled in recent years.
Also filed undergaoeconomic-developmentduplication
Owing delinquent federal debt makes you ineligible for an Export-Import Bank loan guarantee. GAO found the Bank's procedures do not always require staff to check the free federal database that would tell them.
The Export-Import Bank backs U.S. exports with loan guarantees, and by law a person owing certain outstanding delinquent federal nontax debt is ineligible. GAO's September 17 report, covering transactions from October 1, 2022 through December 31, 2025, found EXIM followed its own underwriting guidelines but 'has not fully leveraged available data to identify participants with delinquent federal nontax debt' — its procedures do not always require the use of readily available resources, including no-cost federal databases. One recommendation follows. The finding is not that ineligible applicants were approved; it is that the check which would establish that either way was not required.
Also filed undergaoeximcredit-riskeligibility
One in five school districts cancelled school last year because of the building, not the weather. Two million students lost an estimated 3.5 million days.
GAO's nationwide survey of public school districts, released September 14, estimates that 19 percent of districts cancelled school during 2024-25 because of a facilities problem — most often a plumbing emergency or classroom temperatures nobody could teach in. One district GAO visited closed after classrooms reached 110 degrees. The cancellations affected an estimated 2 million students and cost an estimated 3.5 million days of learning. Nearly half of districts (47 percent) reported chronic facility problems, 55 percent called their most recent facilities budget insufficient, and 73 percent said limited state formula funding for facilities held them back. GAO publishes the confidence interval on every one of those figures, which is more than most numbers you will read this week can say.
Also filed undergaok-12school-facilitieseducation
Federal agencies spent $9.5 billion on salary for people who were not working. GAO says $6.7 billion of it was the deferred resignation program — and no one is tracking the rest of it separately.
GAO's September 15 report finds that federal use of paid administrative leave rose 435 percent between 2023 and 2025, and that agencies in its review spent an estimated $9.5 billion in salary costs on it in 2025 — six times the 2023 figure. About $6.7 billion of that is attributed to the deferred resignation program, under which OPM let employees who agreed to resign or retire stop working immediately and be paid through September 30, 2025. The finding underneath the money is an accounting one: workforce-reduction leave is booked in the same bucket as ordinary administrative leave, so, in GAO's words, OPM 'does not know the actual costs' of it. GAO also found agencies reported 144 percent more paid administrative leave in pay periods containing a public holiday — holidays being logged as administrative leave — and OPM does not plan to fix the published historical data.
Also filed undergaofederal-workforceopmadministrative-leave
July 23 case desk: $186 billion in improper payments is an estimate, not a verdict.
A new Hugin case file opens on federal payment integrity. GAO reported that agencies estimated about $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025 — up roughly $24 billion — with about 73% concentrated in five programs. The file's first job is to hold a line the headlines blur: an improper payment is an accounting measure, not a finding of fraud.
Also filed undercase-deskgaoimproper-paymentsevidence-posturesource-receipts
July 18 case desk: a pharma kickback settlement lands beside two criminal sentences, and the posture column does the work.
Hugin adds three Justice Department records without flattening their postures — a $4.65M EyePoint kickback settlement that stays allegations-only, a $250,000 Lacey Act sentence for mislabeled salmon, and a two-year bribery sentence for a former Census Bureau official.
Also filed undercasesjustice-departmentconsumer-protectionfalse-claims-acthealth-care-fraudtrade-fraudpublic-corruptionsource-receipts
July 16 case desk: a Medicare testing settlement and a customs-duty settlement enter separate public-record lanes.
Hugin adds two July 15 DOJ False Claims Act settlements without merging their postures — a $14.5M Labcorp Medicare urine-drug-testing resolution and a $7.3M Redi-Bag customs-duty resolution — each an allegations-only civil record.
Also filed undercasesjustice-departmentconsumer-protectionfalse-claims-acthealth-care-fraudcustomssource-receipts
July 15 case desk: servicemember towing settlement and a $1B trade-fraud milestone enter separate public-record lanes.
Hugin adds two July 14 DOJ records without collapsing their legal posture: a proposed $160,000 SCRA settlement involving servicemembers' vehicles and an aggregate Trade Fraud Task Force milestone spanning several money categories.
Also filed undercasesjustice-departmentconsumer-protectionservicememberstrade-fraudsource-receipts
July 3 source batch adds vehicle safety, consumer finance, FTC data, GAO joins, and SEC posture checks.
Hugin's public-source registry now has new queryable lanes for NHTSA recalls and complaints, CFPB complaint rows, FTC developer data, plus case updates for GAO and SEC legal-posture records.
Also filed underpublic-datacasesconsumer-protectionpublic-safetysec
A record appears here because it carries public-spending in its own frontmatter. If a record you expected is missing, it was filed under a different subject — the full list is on the topics index.