Unclaimed Bonds: Treasury's $39B Giveback

0:00It's April 30th. US News Today starts now, AI powered and always on. The US Treasury is sitting on $39.2 billion in matured unredeemed savings bonds that folks never cashed in. These are 95 million old paper bonds from decades ago, stopped earning interest, and now repreciates. Ron Estes from Kansas wants to hand that cash back to states so they can track down owners or heirs through their unclaimed property programs. Earlier this week, we saw how Congress passed a law in 2022, called SECUA 2.0, pushing the Treasury to share digitized records. With states, but the Biden team dropped super-tie rules last year that basically blocked real outreach, frustrating lawmakers on both sides who fired off letters. Warning, it went against what Congress intended. Think about the real people hit by this. World War II vets and everyday families who bought these bonds to build highways or

1:00support the war. One story sticks out, three sisters in Missouri died thinking they had nothing, buried as indigen, but they had $670,000. In forgotten bonds, states already reunite lost assets all the time. This just needs federal cooperation. New developments show digitization is mostly done back to 1957, and Estes wrote President Trump last September, reminding him of his own past order on this. Trump folks, including new Treasury Secretary Scott Vessent, are talking options now like a fresh executive order to wave those roadblocks and let. States handle claims with safeguards. Momentum's building fast, no new debt, just honoring old promises. States ready to roll that patriotic cash could flow back where it belongs any day now.