Last year, the U.S. government made at least $162 billion in improper payments, according to a nonpartisan government watchdog. Kristin Kociolek of the Government Accountability Office also told a House oversight subcommittee that the government was defrauded of $233 billion to $521 billion per year between 2018 and 2022.
Social welfare programs and pandemic emergency programs have proven especially prone to errors and abuses. Medicare, the health insurance program for senior citizens, racked up $54.3 billion in improper payments last year. Medicaid, the healthcare program for low-income people, improperly dispensed $31.1 billion. The earned income tax credit, which gives an income tax cut, accounted for another $15.9 billion, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, cost $8.7 billion.
None of this is news to Reps. Pete Sessions (R-TX) or Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), who lead the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce. The two legislators have been investigating errant government payments for a few years.
They are unlikely partners.
Sessions was born in Waco, Texas, and is the son of William Sessions, who headed the FBI during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration. An Eagle Scout, Pete Sessions graduated from Southeastern University and worked for Southwestern Bell before coming to Congress. A reliable conservative, he voted to impeach former President Bill Clinton and regularly denounced former President Barack Obama. Democrat Colin Allred knocked Sessions out of Congress in 2018, winning a Dallas-area seat. But Sessions came back in 2020 by winning a different, more conservative district, which in its current form includes a strip of central Texas and deep east Texas stretching from Nacogdoches to Waco and Round Rock, including former President George W. Bush’s ranch. Sessions later participated in the investigation of former President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Mfume was born Frizzell Gerard Tate in Baltimore and was abandoned by his father in his youth. He dropped out of high school, fathered five children out of wedlock, and had a couple of run-ins with the law as a young man before turning his life around. He adopted a Ghanese name that means “conquering son of kings” and won election to Baltimore’s City Council and later the House of Representatives. He left Congress for a time to run the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. However, Mfume’s eight-year tenure didn’t end happily. He stepped down from the NAACP in 2004 after an internal investigation of allegations that he had sexually harassed female subordinates. Mfume returned to the House of Representatives in an April 2020 special election and represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District, covering Baltimore and eastern and western inner suburbs.
For all their differences, Sessions and Mfume were united during the March hearing. Chairman Sessions underscored that he and Mfume had been working in a bipartisan fashion on this issue. Ranking member Mfume thanked Sessions for meeting him “halfway even though we are on different sides of the aisle,” and joined him in expressing outrage at fraudulent and improper payments.
Sessions and Mfume are only the latest legislators who have tried to solve this nettlesome problem over the past couple of decades. The problem did not start with Biden or the scaling up of massive new relief programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. During President Donald Trump’s first term, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) pointed out, $670 billion in improper payments were made. Since 2003, the federal government has made $2.8 trillion in improper payments.
There is no one cause for errant federal payments, and fraud and improper payments are not synonyms.
Fraud comes in many forms. Sometimes, it involves people falsifying information when they apply for government benefits. Kenneth R. Dieffenbach, an inspector general who heads the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, informed the subcommittee about a family who submitted more than 100 applications for pandemic aid. Other times it is private businesses that rip off taxpayers, such as the medical facilities that bilk Medicaid by performing unnecessary tests. Local officials also break the law, such as when health officials in Mississippi misspent federal funds for needy people on a volleyball stadium.
Improper payments can be a little different. “While all fraudulent payments are considered improper,” the GAO notes, “not all improper payments are due to fraud.” A payment can be deemed improper due to program officials incorrectly entering data or making other paperwork errors. Jennifer Wagner of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities recounted for the subcommittee that one study of SNAP’s improper payments attributed half of them to state officials’ errors.
All of that means reducing fraud and improper payments will require implementing a bevy of new policies. Agencies will need upgraded information technology systems with more robust fraud prevention and detection capabilities. Government data need to be cleaner, and more agencies need to fully utilize the Treasury Department’s “Do Not Pay” system to weed out unqualified applicants.
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Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL) observed that Congress had passed four laws to reduce improper payments since 2002. He suggested that fixing the problem would require Congress and the president to hold agency officials accountable for errant federal payments. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) agreed, as did Mfume.
Before Sessions adjourned the hearing he thanked Mfume again and said they would mark up bipartisan legislation in a couple of weeks to stop federal funds from going to people who do not qualify for them. The two legislators parted gracefully, exited the room, and prepared to take an acrimonious, party-line vote on a federal spending bill.
Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.