Congressman Russell issues statement on law that saves taxpayers $4 billion annually

Press Release

Today, Congressman Steve Russell (OK-5) issued the following statement on the Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies (MEGABYTE) Act, a bill he was the lead Republican and an original co-sponsor of, that was signed into law by President Barack Obama over the summer:

"In May 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted tremendous inefficiency of federal dollars with respect to how federal agencies manage their software licenses. Following their suggestions, the MEGABYTE Act will save hundreds of millions of dollars per agency, annually. But, this bill does more than save the American taxpayers more than $4 billion dollars a year. It also shows that by focusing on one problem at a time, program by program, Congress can come together and create laws to save more where attempting large cuts in a single measure has failed. This victory is just one step towards balancing our national budget, but to that end, I would like to thank Congressmen Matt Cartwright (PA-17), Will Hurd (TX-23), and Elijah Cummings (MD-7) for coming together to highlight this problem and finding a solution to fix it."

The MEGABYTE Act reforms the federal government's management of information technology software licenses. Every agency buys software licenses and many go unused. By sharing these licenses, and through better accounting of how many licenses are needed to begin with, the government could save $181 million tax dollars per agency per year, for a total of more than $4 billion per year.

The MEGABYTE Act passed the House on June 7 by a vote of 366-0, and the Senate by unanimous consent on July 14. President Obama signed it into law on July 29.

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