The Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to require Executive and independent agencies to report annually on federally funded projects that are either more than five years behind the original completion date or at least $1 billion over the original cost estimate. Reports must include project descriptions, original and current cost and schedule estimates (adjusted for inflation), contractor and subrecipient identities, explanations of scope changes, and any incentive payments tied to the project.
OMB must compile the submissions, deliver the consolidated report to Congress, and post it publicly online.
For procurement officers, program managers, appropriations and oversight staff, and large federal contractors, the bill creates a recurring, standardized disclosure stream for the worst schedule and cost failures across the federal government. That information is intended to improve congressional and public oversight, but it also creates administrative work for agencies, raises questions about sensitive procurement data, and may influence how agencies set baselines and negotiate incentives going forward.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires the OMB Director to issue guidance (within one year of enactment) obligating covered agencies to submit an annual list of 'covered projects' — defined as those more than five years late or at least $1 billion over the original cost estimate. Submissions must provide specified data elements, including CPI‑adjusted cost figures and contractor/subrecipient identities; OMB publishes the compiled report to Congress and on its website.
Who It Affects
Covered agencies are Executive agencies under 5 U.S.C. §105 and independent regulatory agencies under 44 U.S.C. §3502. Directly affected stakeholders include agency program and procurement offices, contracting officers, major federal contractors and grant recipients, OMB staff who will administer the reporting, and congressional appropriations and oversight committees.
Why It Matters
The bill sets a government‑wide, standardized disclosure requirement for large overruns and long delays, creating a single public source of program failure data. That shifts how oversight committees, watchdogs, and the public can track program performance, and it changes incentives around baselines, scope changes, and incentive fees.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act establishes a narrow, repeatable mechanism: OMB must publish guidance within one year that forces covered agencies to identify and report every ‘‘covered project’’ each year. A covered project meets either of two bright‑line tests: it is over five years behind its original planned completion date or its spending exceeds the original cost estimate by at least $1 billion.
The bill makes OMB the central collector and publisher of those agency submissions.
The reporting obligation is fairly detailed. Agencies must give short project descriptions, where the work occurs, contract or award numbers where applicable, the year the project started, how much of the project cost is federally funded, and name the primary contractors, subcontractors, grant recipients and subgrantees.
They must also explain any scope changes, provide original and current expected completion dates, and supply original and current cost estimates that are adjusted using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U). The bill explicitly asks for explanations for delays or cost growth — including whether insufficient or delayed appropriations contributed — and it requires agencies to disclose any awards, incentive fees, or bonuses tied to the project and the rationale for them.The Act excludes projects funded through 'direct spending' as defined in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, but otherwise takes a broad view of what counts as a project (major acquisitions, defense acquisition programs, procurements, construction, remediation, and other time‑limited endeavors).
After agencies submit their annual files under OMB’s guidance, the Director must post a consolidated annual report to Congress and on the OMB website, creating a single, recurring public dataset on the government's largest cost and schedule failures. Notably, the statute prescribes disclosure and publication but does not create new penalties or corrective processes beyond making the information public.
The Five Things You Need to Know
A project becomes 'covered' if it is either more than five years behind the original completion date or at least $1,000,000,000 over the original cost estimate.
OMB must issue guidance within one year of enactment requiring covered agencies to submit specified project data on an annual basis.
Both the original and current cost estimates must be adjusted to current dollars using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI‑U).
Agencies must disclose the names of primary contractors, subcontractors, grant recipients, and subgrantees and include contract or award numbers where applicable.
The Director must compile agency submissions, deliver an annual report to Congress, and post the report on the OMB website; the statute creates disclosure but no statutory enforcement penalties for projects that appear on the list.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Designates the Act as the 'Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act of 2025.' This is purely a formal title provision and has no operative effect on obligations or scope; practitioners can cite the Act by this name in communications and compliance plans.
Who and what the statute covers
Defines 'covered agency' to include Executive agencies (5 U.S.C. §105) and independent regulatory agencies (44 U.S.C. §3502), and defines 'project' broadly to include major acquisitions, major defense acquisition programs, procurements, construction, remediation, and other time‑limited endeavors — but excludes projects funded through direct spending under the Balanced Budget act. The key operational definition is 'covered project' — the statute uses two alternative thresholds (time and cost) to trigger reporting, which means a project need only meet one test to require disclosure.
Data fields agencies must provide
Requires OMB to issue guidance so agencies will submit an annual file for each covered project including project purpose, locations, contract/award numbers where applicable, start year, federal share, and the names of primary contractors, subcontractors, grant recipients and subgrantees. The guidance must also require agencies to document changes to scope, original and current completion dates, original and current cost estimates (CPI‑U adjusted), explanations for delays and cost increases (including impacts from appropriations), and disclosure of any incentive or bonus payments and the rationale for them. Those granular requirements matter in practice: they force agencies to tie narrative explanations to specific baseline metrics and to reveal vendor identities and incentive structures that some programs have historically kept internal.
OMB consolidation and public posting
Obliges the OMB Director to collect those agency submissions and produce an annual consolidated report that the Director must submit to Congress and post on OMB’s website. The statutory duty is to publish the information; the bill does not prescribe formats beyond the guidance OMB will issue, nor does it create an independent audit or mandatory remediation pathway. The consolidated public posting centralizes data for congressional committees, GAO, and outside watchdogs, making it the de facto government‑wide dataset on large overruns and long delays.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Congressional appropriations and oversight committees — gain a standardized, government‑wide dataset on major cost and schedule failures to inform hearings, budget decisions, and legislative fixes.
- OMB, Inspectors General, and GAO — benefit from structured inputs that simplify cross‑agency comparisons and trend analysis and help prioritize reviews and audits.
- Taxpayers and watchdog organizations — receive centralized public disclosure of the largest overruns and delays, enabling more direct public scrutiny and media reporting.
- Program risk managers and performance offices — obtain clearer data to benchmark programs and support internal reform efforts, particularly where recurrent issues point to systemic weaknesses.
Who Bears the Cost
- Covered agencies' program and contracting offices — must build or expand data collection, verification, and reporting processes to produce the required fields annually, which consumes staff time and budget.
- OMB — takes on the administrative burden of producing guidance, collecting submissions, consolidating data, and maintaining public postings, likely requiring staffing and tooling investments.
- Contractors, subcontractors, and grant recipients — face disclosure of identities, award numbers, and incentive payments that can raise reputational risk and complicate confidentiality expectations in commercial negotiations.
- Small program offices and independent agencies with limited compliance capacity — may struggle to meet the new reporting cadence without reassigning program staff from core delivery tasks.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is accountability versus administrative practicality (and program integrity): the bill advances public accountability by forcing disclosure of the biggest cost and schedule failures, but doing so risks imposing burdens that divert staff from program delivery, incentivizing baseline manipulation to avoid bad headlines, and exposing sensitive procurement details without providing a structured remedy for the underlying program failures.
The bill creates clear transparency gains but also several implementation tensions. First, the reporting thresholds (five years late or $1 billion overrun) are simple but coarse; many chronic projects that undermine budgets may fall below those thresholds and escape the regime, while truly complex national security programs might be excluded from public disclosure on security grounds.
Second, requiring both original and current cost estimates to be CPI‑U adjusted standardizes arithmetic but does not resolve deeper comparability problems: baseline estimates are politically and technically malleable, and agencies can rebudget or rebaseline to avoid triggering the thresholds. Third, the statute mandates disclosure of contractors and incentive payments, which promotes accountability but raises procurement sensitivity and potential legal or contractual confidentiality issues; OMB guidance will have to balance transparency with valid non‑public interests.
Finally, the Act prescribes publication but no enforcement mechanisms — there is no audit requirement, no mandatory corrective action, and no penalty for agencies that gamed baselines or failed to provide robust explanations — making the measure primarily a transparency tool rather than a performance‑management remedy.
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