Government agency reviewing billions of redundant spending, from toilet paper to software

Exclusive: The federal government’s supply-side agency aims to reduce waste and redundancies in its shared goods and services, which include IT software and toilet paper supplies.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order requiring government agencies to submit proposals to the General Services Administration regarding common goods and services that can be consolidated or eliminated within the federal government.

The GSA is examining all agencies’ current spending on various products and services, totaling a $490 billion budget, according to the White House. Some of the targeted products include laptops, office supplies, and building and computer cloud services.

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The budget review comes as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, is looking to gut $1 trillion in federal spending. While the decisions GSA makes are independent, the agency is working in partnership with DOGE to reach the savings goal.

Despite the wide variety of areas that GSA needs to examine, it is excited to achieve these goals for the federal government. In an exclusive interview with FOX Business, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said this would restore the agency to its original mission while allowing other agencies to focus on their core missions.

“You need to be focused on your mission criticality and that shouldn’t necessarily involve purchasing software or purchasing business services,” Gruenbaum said. “The GSA is there to do that, to alleviate all those burdens and all those obligations from other agencies.”

GSA was established in 1949 by former President Harry Truman through the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act as a centralized agency that handles common goods and services for other federal agencies.

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Gruenbaum said Trump’s executive order will create urgency for GSA to gain the leverage needed to examine existing contracts, including nearly 8,000 identified by the agency that show little to no return on investment, in an effort to have a trickle-down effect on Americans.

“We are fiduciaries for the American taxpayer, and that means every single dollar, every single penny, is our responsibility to make sure that we are spending it and thinking about it in the way that every single taxpayer who goes to work every day has food on their table,” Gruenbaum said. “Is this a responsible way to be thinking about how to use their hard-earned money?”

GSA says it has already identified $20 million in savings in its IT spending, which includes subscription redundancies and underused services.

In the Trump-era mission of cutting waste out of the federal government, Gruenbaum said the agency can identify at least 10% of savings totaling nearly $50 billion, but adds the caveat that these are very conservative estimates, which can push the savings even greater.

GSA’s average purchase price of goods and services is 20% lower than that available through other federal government services, according to the White House. Gruenbaum said this exacerbates the reason why consolidating this process will give the agency the same cost-cutting benefits as the private sector.

“We’re the federal government,” Gruenbaum said. “We should have a price with volume and discount the way any other private enterprise would get those same benefits from industry as well.”

Despite the push for centralized spending, the GSA acknowledges that this is primarily a “partnership effort” with other agencies, and some spending decisions should be left to each agency according to their specializations.

Agencies must submit their consolidation proposals to GSA by May 19. Gruenbaum said that many have already prepared these proposals, and he expects to receive them before the deadline.

After GSA reviews the proposals, it will create a comprehensive plan to submit to the Office of Personnel Management by June 18 for approval.