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$162 billion in one month: The September rush: spend it before it expires
Agencies signed $161.9B in contracts in September 2025 — 19.5% of the year's contract money in the last month, 2.7 times an average month.
Every federal agency that buys things
- Contract obligations, FY2025$828.6B1
- September 2025 alone$161.9B1
- Share of the year19.5% (an even month: 8.3%)1
- Versus an average October–August month2.7×1
- September's share, FY2018–FY202514.7%–19.5%1
- Years September was the biggest month8 of 81
- Last-week IT projects rated lower quality2–6× more likely2
- Why each contract was signed in September████████████████
What happened
The federal fiscal year ends September 30, and one-year money that isn't committed by then can no longer be used for new contracts. We pulled every month of federal contract obligations from USAspending.gov for fiscal 2018 through 2025.
September was the biggest month in all 8 years. In fiscal 2025 agencies obligated $161.9B in September — 19.5% of the year — against an average of $60.6B in each of the other eleven months.
Why nobody caught it
- Economists Jeffrey Liebman and Neale Mahoney found agencies spend 4.9 times a normal week's amount in the last week of the year, and that last-week IT projects were 2 to 6 times more likely to be rated lower quality.
- USAspending shows when a contract was signed, not why. Nothing in the public record explains the timing.
How sure are we?
FraudBad counted it ourselves from official government data. The page shows the query and links to the data.
Measured by FraudBad from USAspending.gov contract obligations by fiscal month (October is month 1). A September spike isn't proof of waste; some contracts are timed to the budget cycle for good reasons. Fiscal 2026 isn't shown because its last months are still being reported.
Sources
- USAspending.gov spending-over-time data: federal contract obligations by fiscal month, FY2018–FY2025USAspending.gov (U.S. Treasury), pulled by FraudBad · Nov 9, 2026
- Use-it-or-lose-it budget rules (Liebman & Mahoney, NBER Working Paper 19481)National Bureau of Economic Research · Mar 2014
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