The U.S. Treasury currently owes bondholders $39.2 billion in "MUD" (matured unredeemed debt) – government bonds that were simply never cashed in and stopped earning interest years ago.
And with the likelihood small that any of these 95 million paper bonds will ever be presented, some argue that money could be used better for the benefit of the public.
Rep. Ron Estes, R-Kan., is one congressman who is working to return these $39.2 billion unclaimed bonds back to every state for the benefit of taxpayers.
Estes knows firsthand the problem of unclaimed bonds. Over a decade ago while staffing an unclaimed-property booth at a state fair, Estes, then serving as Kansas state treasurer, helped a man recover $14,000 in U.S. savings bonds that had been forgotten in a safe-deposit box.
The bonds are not some abstract government ledger entry.
They represent hard-earned dollars that ordinary citizens — some of them World War II-era patriots — loaned to the country in small and large denominations.
Or think about many decades ago your grandmother buying from her a local bank a $500 bond and giving it to you for school graduation. The bond was lost in boxes, but the money never disappeared on a federal ledger.
Or when celebrities from Carole Lombard to Bob Hope barnstormed the nation to sell the bonds as a safe way to support the war effort.
For later generations, bonds were used to build highways and other nationwide infrastructure, with buyers tucking away the paper certificates. Somewhere.
An anecdote illustrating the issue's importance involved a cache belonging to three unmarried sisters from an immigrant family in Missouri who had bonds from the 1940s.
By the time the last sister died in 1998, their estates looked so modest that local authorities covered their funerals as indigent cases, even though, unbeknownst to the sisters, they were entitled to bonds worth $670,000.
Estes has repeatedly introduced bipartisan legislation to force the Treasury to share digitized records with states, whose unclaimed-property offices already run programs to reunite people with lost assets.
A version of that effort succeeded in 2022 when Congress passed the SECURE 2.0 Act. The law directed the Treasury to enter information-sharing agreements with states, allowing them to use a long-established process called escheatment to locate bondholders.
But in 2024, the Biden administration's Treasury Department issued final regulations that were so restrictive that they made public outreach nearly impossible, barring states from using their full escheatment authority — the very mechanism Congress had endorsed.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, fired off a pointed letter to the Office of Management and Budget in 2024, warning that the draft rules would "frustrate congressional intent."
A bipartisan group of House Ways and Means members, led by Estes and Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., sent a similar appeal to then-Secretary Janet Yellen, also in 2024. Neither received a substantive reply.
Then, Estes laid out the case plainly in a Sept. 23 letter last year to President Donald Trump that Newsmax has reviewed.
"The U.S. Treasury Department has refused to take any credible steps to reunite these original bond owners or their heirs with their property," he wrote. "As a result, Treasury is now in possession of 95 million matured but unredeemed bonds worth more than $39 billion — a sum that has more than doubled since 2013."
In the letter, Trump was reminded of his own 2020 executive order from his first term directing the digitization of bond records, a crucial step in getting bonds back to their rightful owners.
Digitization has been completed back to 1957, while earlier records remain on microfilm
"Reuniting U.S. bondholders with the nearly $40 billion in unclaimed savings bonds owed to them does not add to the national debt, as these bonds are existing obligations of the U.S. government," Estes wrote.
The letter then turned sharply critical of the Biden-era rule.
"However, Treasury has instead thrown up roadblock after roadblock, ignoring the will of Congress and the States," Estes wrote.
Estes asked Trump to issue a new executive order to waive Biden's regulations and to direct the Treasury to share records for use in state escheatment proceedings, subject to safeguards, such as a five-year waiting period after maturity and the right of any legitimate claimant to redeem the bond without undue burden.
"Over the decades, Americans have loaned money to the federal government through U.S. savings bonds," Estes told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. "Over 30 years, the bonds matured and they no longer paid interest. But there was no process at the federal government level to track people down and pay off the bond."
The contrast with the previous administration is unmistakable.
Once Congress changed the law and courts had sided with the states, Estes said, "the Biden administration went back and changed the rules. They either didn't want to do it, or they didn't want to put the effort in to get the money back to the Americans who deserved it."
Asked why they resisted, Estes chuckled, then said: "I don't know why they resisted helping Americans."
Now, the momentum has shifted, as Estes has held conversations with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other Trump administration officials, though not yet with Trump.
"We're looking at what's the best, most expedient way to make it happen," Estes said. "I think an executive order is the easiest way."
He added that, if legislation proves necessary, he is ready to pursue it.
The U.S. Department of Treasury did not respond to a request for comment from Newsmax.
The path is straightforward now that most bond records have been digitized, though several people interviewed by Newsmax say that Trump, despite the letter from Estes, may not even be aware that his ultimate goal — getting bond money to their rightful owners — has been stymied.
Under the agreements Estes has proposed, the Treasury would provide states with digital records for bonds tied to addresses within their borders. States would handle notice, due process, and redemption, and no new spending is required since the government is simply honoring debts it already owes.
Advocates at Capitol Counsel, a Washington government relations firm that has worked on the issue for years, echo the optimism.
John Raffaelli, a partner there, told Newsmax that the Treasury under Biden had taken the position of "don't look for anybody."
"The bottom line is trying to repay the patriotic citizens who invested in savings bonds. World War II was paid for with savings bonds," Raffaelli said. "It's the states' responsibility to determine title and actually find them, and every state has an unclaimed property system."
George Sifakis, also a partner at Capitol Counsel, told Newsmax that, "You should be able to plug your name in with the unclaimed property division of your state. This only takes an executive order. There's one person who can solve this tomorrow, and that's the president."
He added, with a touch of exasperation: "There's $39 billion of patriotic Americans' money sitting in the Treasury right now. This is a travesty that President Trump can solve tomorrow."
Paul Bond has been a journalist for three decades, writing stories reporters in legacy media typically ignore. His work has primarily appeared in Newsweek, USA Today, Reuters and The Hollywood Reporter. Follow him on X at: @WriterPaulBond
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