Would you believe it? Washington has finally begun to act to control wasteful government spending. From hearings to markups to floor consideration, legislators finally appear to be taking measures to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse within federal programs.
Of course, the proof is in the pudding, as the measures have some way to go before they get enacted into law. But the moves are all good signs that Congress understands the need to protect scarce taxpayer dollars and combat the crooks as one way to get spiraling federal deficits back under control.
Bills on the House Floor
Apart from approving a budget reconciliation bill providing funding for immigration enforcement that the Senate considered and passed last week, most of the legislative activity on the House floor this week will focus on various anti-fraud measures.
One bill from the House Education and Workforce Committee would require that the Department of Education incorporate identity fraud detection systems into the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to prevent individuals from pilfering federal student aid dollars. A separate resolution, introduced last week by Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, would place the House of Representatives on record as “condemn[ing] the fraudulent actions of those seeking to defraud the United States Government” and endorsing prepayment verification of program eligibility.
The House will also consider under regular order two additional bills within the jurisdiction of the House Oversight Committee. The first measure would require agency heads to temporarily halt payments if the agency determines that “the payment presents an elevated risk of fraud.” The second would establish a permanent inspector general designed to root out fraud, building upon the temporary Pandemic Response Accountability Committee created to investigate the explosion in fraud associated with Covid-era spending.
Protecting Taxpayer Funds
Beyond those measures, the House will also consider eight additional pieces of legislation, most of which the Oversight Committee approved in late April. These bills will come under suspension of the rules procedure, which allows for faster consideration of noncontroversial measures with broad bipartisan support.
Included among the eight bills is a measure to expand the Treasury’s Do Not Pay system and ensure that other agencies utilize this system to prevent improper or fraudulent payments from going out the door. Another bill would establish a federal program for anti-fraud enforcement and training, so employees in federal offices have the tools to help investigate and detect fraud before it happens.
A third piece of legislation would permit agency heads to provide cash awards of up to $20,000 to employees “whose identification of wasteful expenses to the Chief Financial Officer … has resulted in cost savings for the agency or prevented” improper payments resulting in financial losses. And a fourth bill would prohibit grants or other federal financial assistance from going to “an individual convicted of a covered felony arising out of any Federal contract” or grant for three years following that person’s conviction.
Additional Measures Likely
While most of the action this week will focus on legislation approved by the Oversight Committee, other congressional committees have also acted on anti-fraud measures. Just before Memorial Day, the House Ways and Means Committee marked up a series of health care and related measures, several of which focused on fighting fraud.
For instance, the Ways and Means Committee unanimously approved legislation that would require the Department of Labor to work with states to recover some of the nearly $1 billion in fraudulent Covid-era unemployment benefits that are sitting in unused bank debit cards. It also approved legislation designed to crack down on fraud relating to durable medical equipment (DME), such as wheelchairs, back braces, etc., requiring electronic submission of all DME claims as a program integrity measure. The full House will likely consider these measures in the coming weeks.
The pervasive, permissive culture of fraud revealed in recent months took time to accumulate within the federal government. It will likewise take time to dismantle these structures and networks built up over many years. But at least the kinds of actions seen this week show that Congress (or much of Congress, anyway) understands the problem and is willing to take action to begin to solve it.
