{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-homeland-security-government-affairs-committee-passes-sen-pauls-bonuses-cost-cutters-act/", "Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee Passes Sen. Paul\u2019s Bonuses for Cost Cutters Act", "2016-05-25", "2016", "2016-05", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C \u2013 Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs passed Sen. Rand Paul\u2019s Bonuses for Cost-Cutters Act, a bill with bipartisan support, that encourages federal agencies to return unneeded funds to the taxpayer through bonus incentives. The bill was passed in committee with an affirmative 12-5 vote.\n\nCurrent law allows an agency\u2019s inspector general to pay bonuses up to $10,000 of savings realized when a federal employee identifies waste, fraud or mismanagement of funds. Senator Paul\u2019s legislation would further incentivize ending wasteful government spending by allowing employees to qualify for these bonuses if they identify unneeded or surplus funds.\n\nAdditionally, this legislation would ensure that 90% of the savings be automatically directed towards deficit reduction.\n\n\u201cI am pleased that my legislation has received bipartisan support and is on its way to full passage in the U.S. Senate,\u201d Sen. Paul said. \u201cMy bill will incentivize government employees to find, report and eliminate government waste, fraud and abuse throughout our bloated federal government.\u201d\n\nFederal employees are on the front lines of federal spending. Rewarding those employees for saving taxpayer money will create a personal incentive to counter the current end-of-year rush to exhaust all available funds. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, \u201cSpending in the last week of the year is 4.9 times higher then the rest-of-the-year weekly average.\u201d\n\nThe full language of this legislation is available HERE.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T20:51:40Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-homeland-security-government-affairs-committee-passes-sen-pauls-bonuses-cost-cutters-act/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5995539724826813, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}