Witness at the hearing made the point that continuing to do the same things to address improper payments is not working and the problem is growing. Image: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffIn a rare show of bipartisanship in recent times in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, the leaders of the subcommittee on government operations have asked the GAO for an assessment of agency efforts to reduce improper payments and to recommend possible new strategies.
Three hearings into the subject during this Congress sought to “evaluate whether agencies are getting better or worse at ensuring the levels of fraud seen during the pandemic will “never happen again.” Unfortunately, because of limited or unreliable information maintained by federal agencies, the Subcommittee has been unable to adequately assess agencies’ progress,” the request letter said.
“Moreover, witness testimonies at our hearings made clear that continuing to do the same things to address improper payments is not working and will not address growing problems . . . We need to find and implement new solutions to prevent improper payments and fraud across government programs,” said the letter from chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, and ranking Democrat Kweisi Mfume of Maryland.
Their letter said that the amount improper payments—about three fourths of which are overpayments, while most of the rest are improperly documented payments and the remainder underpayments—”continues to grow” despite a series of directives and laws.
They asked GAO to examine the extent to which agencies have “adequately identified and assessed the true root causes of documented improper payments, including those related to fraudulent activity; identified and implemented corrective actions that would address these root causes; secured the data needed to help address the root causes; and identified barriers, if any, that are preventing them from fully addressing the root causes, to include the inability to access necessary data.”
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