Kennedy on U.S. Senate Floor: ‘The federal government has your money, and we want to get it back to you.’

Watch Kennedy's comments here.

WASHINGTON - Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) spoke on the U.S. Senate floor about his efforts to help Americans claim the money that the federal government may owe them through mature, unclaimed savings bonds. Kennedy also outlined the steps that state treasurers should take to reunite Americans with their money.

Key speech excerpts are below.

"Mr. President, I've learned a few things in life. I want to mention two: number one, money does not buy happiness; number two, poverty does not buy a damn thing. And that's the theme of my few minutes as I talk today. This is about people's money, and it has to do with unredeemed, uncashed savings bonds."

. . .

"Here's what I'm driving at: Right now, over in the United States Department of Treasury, there are 100 million unredeemed savings bonds-money that belongs to the American people-and it's no longer earning interest . . . [T]he money's just sitting there, and the federal government's using it, and they're not paying people interest."

"The total amount of these unredeemed savings bonds: $36.27 billion. And that $36 billion has been there a long, long time, because people have either died or they've forgotten that they have these unredeemed savings bonds."

. . .

"[B]ack in 2023, I introduced a bill which actually passed . . . that said to the federal government, specifically the United States Department of Treasury, 'You've got to give this money back.' . . . Why are you just sitting on this $36 billion?"

. . .

"And they said, 'Kennedy, you don't understand. First of all, . . . the records are not digitized . . . and it's just a lot of trouble.' And I said, 'Well, I feel your pain, but you still ought to return the money to people. So, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to introduce a bill'-and I did, and I passed it-'[that provides] money for the U.S. Department of Treasury to digitize those records . . . and put them in a database so they can be easily searched.' And the U.S. Department of Treasury has done that, and I want to thank them."

. . .

"We are ready to turn the names and addresses and serial numbers over to the treasurer of every state-in Louisiana, in West Virginia, in every other state . . . so they can contact people in their state and say, 'The federal government has your money, and we want to get it back to you.'"

. . .

"[W]e're almost home. What now we have to do is get the state treasurers to sign an agreement with the U.S. Department of Treasury to cooperate, and Treasury will send them the names, and we can start returning this money to people.

"And I'm going to be sending another letter out, in short order, to all the state treasurers asking them to go ahead and sign that user agreement with the Treasury Department so we can start getting this money back to people.

"It's free money . . . If I can just get our state treasurers to turn in these user agreements . . . you may not get a check for Christmas, but if you hurry up, you can get a check in January or February, so you can pay some bills."

Background:

• Kennedy authored the Unclaimed Savings Bond Act of 2021, which was signed into law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.

• Kennedy's law requires the U.S. Treasury to share information about the original owners of unclaimed savings bonds with officials in every state. This allows state treasurers to add information about mature, unredeemed savings bonds to their state's unclaimed property program, enabling more Americans to locate and claim their missing investments.

• In November 2025, Kennedy sent this letter to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators and the National Association of State Treasurers, emphasizing, "It is imperative that all states enter into this User Agreement so Americans throughout the United States are efficiently reunited with their matured unredeemed debt to which they are entitled."

• Kennedy managed Louisiana's unclaimed property program for 17 years while serving as state treasurer. During this time, Kennedy reunited Louisianians with roughly $400 million in their unclaimed property.

Watch Kennedy's speech here.