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Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. I am going to try not to use my full time, Madam President.

It has become in vogue in Washington to talk about government waste, and I am glad. I think that is a good thing. It has become in vogue to talk about inefficiencies and reducing spending, and I think that is a good thing.

I remember when I first got here back in 2017, one of my early Appropriations Committee meetings. I was green as a gourd. We had just passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I thought to myself, you know, we are going to run some deficits for a while because we just cut taxes.

And there was an item in the budget for, I think, a 3- or 4-percent automatic pay raise for our Federal employees. They get it every year. I am not saying they don't deserve it. A lot of people deserve more money. I never heard anybody around this place stand up and say: I have a bad idea, and I need money for it. It is always a great idea. So I am not begrudging Federal employees.

But I told my colleagues: You know, if we are going to run deficits, maybe we ought to skip the pay raise this year. And I made a motion.

I remember some of my colleagues looked at me like I had a sexually transmitted disease or something. I mean, I made this motion, and I didn't think it was that big a deal. I got--I don't know how many members on the Appropriations Committee there are--35, 40. I got two votes. Everybody else suddenly had an important message on their phone.

So I learned a good lesson. I like to say my mother didn't raise a fool, and if she did, it was one of my brothers. But I was a fool then. But I am glad things have changed, and I hope we follow through.

Now, government waste takes many forms. But I will tell you one form. It is the purest form. It is when the Federal Government has taxpayer money and it doesn't belong to the Federal Government, but the Federal Government refuses to give it back. And that is the case we have in the Department of Treasury.

I don't want to be too hard on my friends at Treasury because they have come around. It has taken 8 years, but they have come around. The Department of Treasury is holding 95 million--not 950,000--95 million unredeemed and fully matured savings bonds.

I will explain what that means in a second.

The value is $38 billion. Now, there are only 335 million Americans. So this is probably not realistic, but if one unredeemed bond--if you assess one unredeemed bond to one individual American, that is 30 percent of our country.

What is a matured, unredeemed savings bond? A savings bond, as you probably know, is just a loan to the government. That is all it is. You want to invest your money, and you want to help the government. Say you want to--in World War II, we sold a lot of bonds to help pay for World War II. You say, give money to the government, and over a long period of time--usually 20 or 30 years, sometimes 10 to 15--at the end, you will get back money, plus interest.

It is not like a regular bond where you get quarterly interest payments. You give your money to the Federal Government. The Federal Government takes your name and address. You get a piece of paper. And at the end of however long of a bond you buy--say, 20 years--you get back your principal, plus interest.

A good example is--there are all types of savings bonds, and I don't want to get too far down in the weeds. But let's take an EE U.S. savings bond. Suppose I buy one. I go to the Federal Government, I give the Federal Government $200. They take my name; they take my address; they give me a sheet of paper. They used to give you an actual bond. They don't do that anymore. I say, great, I just invested 200 bucks. In 20 years, I can go back to the Federal Government, and they will give me 400 bucks--my original 200 bucks, plus the interest. It is a great deal. It used to be parents would buy savings bonds for their children. And during World War II, the government financed part of the war selling savings bonds.

There is just one problem with this scenario. I have known this for a long time. The Federal Government has 95 million--$38 billion worth of savings bonds over at Treasury. They have the names, and they have the addresses of all of these people. And the people who are owed that money, many of them are dead. But when those bonds matured, they didn't come get their money. You say: Well, that is OK. If you gave them $200, it will just keep earning interest. No, it won't. It becomes interest- free. If I buy a 20-year bond, at the end of 20 years, if I don't come get my principal and my interest, I don't get any extra interest.

For a long time, the Department of Treasury has had the names of these 95 million people or their heirs, and it totals $38 billion.

So, naive as I was, I went to the Department of Treasury and said: We need to give this money back to people. What is the problem? You have got names. You have got addresses.

After a while, you didn't have to be Einstein's cousin to figure out they weren't going to cooperate.

Now, finally, I got--I want to give him full credit--I got Secretary Mnuchin's attention. I mean, I understand Steve was busy. It wasn't a priority. But he directed his people to cooperate with me, and some of them did, and some of them didn't.

Then President Trump got defeated, and Secretary Yellen came in. Secretary Yellen--she tried to help, but multiple people opposed my idea.

So I finally just went and passed a bill. I passed the Unclaimed Savings Bond Act--and I want to thank President Biden for signing it-- directing Treasury to give people's money back. I mean, how hard can this be?

Well, after I passed the law, I went to see the folks over there, and they said: Well, there is a problem we didn't tell you about. All of these records, these names and addresses, are in storage, and they have to be digitized. They are just a mess, OK. They have to be digitized.

I said: OK.

I went and got money put in the budget to digitize the records, and we have done that. About 97 percent of them have been digitized.

Then Treasury said: You know, it is not really our job to go look for people. We can put up a toll-free number.

I said: Here is what we will do. I want you to cooperate with the States. Every State has an unclaimed property program.

What is unclaimed property? When a business or government--supposed to be the case--has your money and they can't find you, they can't keep it. If you go rent an apartment, for example, and put down a $1,000 deposit and you move, that apartment owner is not supposed to keep your $1,000. That apartment owner is supposed to turn it over to the State treasurer and the--all State treasurers do a wonderful job. They put your name on a website, and people can go and look it up and see if they have money.

Every State has an unclaimed property program. I mean, it is old bank accounts; it is stocks; it is bonds; it is mutual funds; it is royalties, royalty payments; it is health insurance proceeds; it is old tax refunds. Every treasurer--you can go to their website and put in your name or a friend's name and check to see if they have money.

When I was State treasurer, I had a program--it is a long story--when I was State treasurer and even before then, when I was a State tax collector, we returned about $400 million to people in Louisiana.

So there is an infrastructure set up. Treasury doesn't have to do a thing--not a damn thing. Again, I want to give Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Yellen full credit because they have been great, but it has been hard to get some of their people up off their ice-cold, lazy butts. But we passed the law, we got the records digitized, and my purpose of being here today is to try to tell folks after 8 years, we are--this summer, in about 6 months, we are going to take all those digital records, names and addresses, and they are going to be sent to the State treasurer in every State. The State treasurers are anxious to put names and addresses on their websites. They already publicized their programs. They are going to encourage their people to go to their State's website, and if they have an unredeemed, matured savings bond or, more likely, their mom or dad did or even their grandmother and they can prove that they are the child or the grandchild, as the case may be, they can get the money. They can get the money.

I know some folks at Treasury are upset about me. They loved having $38 billion of taxpayer money sitting there on the books that they can use. But it is not right. You can call it waste if you want to. You can call it inefficiency if you want to. I don't care what you call it--it is not right.

So, this summer, I will be back to tell you when we turn the program on, but we are going to send 95 million names out to every State treasury in the Union, and they are going to start giving this money back. I hope all people have to do is go to a website and check their name, and the treasurer will take it from there.

I want to thank Secretary Yellen and I want to thank Secretary Mnuchin for working with me on this. I want to thank President Biden, and I want to thank President Trump. I want to thank the people at Treasury who cooperated. I am sorry those who made it so difficult did, but we finally got it done.

So thank you. I think I did that quicker than 30 minutes.

With that, I either yield to Senator Durbin--well, he doesn't want to speak.

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