Shifting Gears: Moving from Recovery to Prevention of Improper Payments and Fraud (March 11, 2025)
Summary
Transcript of the hearing Shifting Gears: Moving from Recovery to Prevention of Improper Payments and Fraud, before the Subcommittee on Government Operations of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on March 11, 2025 (Serial No. 119–12). Hon. Pete Sessions, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presided, entered the opening statement into the record and called the session a follow-up to earlier meetings. Witnesses were Ms. Kristen Kociolek of the U.S. Government Accountability Office; Mr. Ken Dieffenbach, Executive Director, Pandemic Response Accountability Committee; and minority witness Ms. Jennifer Wagner of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The subcommittee adjourned at 11:48 a.m.
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“Shifting Gears: Moving from Recovery to Prevention of Improper Payments and Fraud (March 11, 2025).”
Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-119hhrg59604-shifting-gears-moving-from-recovery-to-prevention-of-6f3b2588e7/
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SHIFTING GEARS: MOVING FROM RECOVERY
TO PREVENTION OF IMPROPER PAYMENTS
AND FRAUD
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S.HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH 11, 2025
Serial No. 119–12
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
(
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59–604 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
JIM JORDAN, Ohio GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia, Ranking
MIKE TURNER, Ohio Minority Member
PAUL GOSAR, Arizona ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, Illinois
GARY PALMER, Alabama RO KHANNA, California
CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
PETE SESSIONS, Texas SHONTEL BROWN, Ohio
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona MELANIE STANSBURY, New Mexico
NANCY MACE, South Carolina ROBERT GARCIA, California
PAT FALLON, Texas MAXWELL FROST, Florida
BYRON DONALDS, Florida SUMMER LEE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania GREG CASAR, Texas
WILLIAM TIMMONS, South Carolina JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee EMILY RANDALL, Washington
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, Georgia SUHAS SUBRAMANYAM, Virginia
LAUREN BOEBERT, Colorado YASSAMIN ANSARI, Arizona
ANNA PAULINA LUNA, Florida WESLEY BELL, Missouri
NICK LANGWORTHY, New York LATEEFAH SIMON, California
ERIC BURLISON, Missouri DAVE MIN, California
ELI CRANE, Arizona AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts
BRIAN JACK, Georgia RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
JOHN MCGUIRE, Virginia
BRANDON GILL, Texas
MARK MARIN, Staff Director
JAMES RUST, Deputy Staff Director
MITCH BENZINE, General Counsel
BILL WOMACK, Senior Advisor
MALLORY COGAR, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
CONTACT NUMBER: 202-225-5074
JAMIE SMITH, Minority Staff Director
CONTACT NUMBER: 202-225-5051
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
PETE SESSIONS, Texas, Chairman
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina KWEISI MFUME, Maryland, Ranking Minority
GARY PALMER, Alabama Member
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
BRIAN JACK, Georgia Columbia
BRANDON GILL, Texas MAXWELL FROST, Florida
EMILY RANDALL, Washington
(II)
C O N T E N T S
Page
Hearing held on March 11, 2025 ............................................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Ms. Kristen Kociolek, Managing Director, Financial Management and Assur-
ance, U.S. Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 5
Mr. Ken Dieffenbach, Executive Director, Pandemic Response Accountability
Committee
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 7
Ms. Jennifer Wagner (Minority Witness), Director of Medicaid Eligibility and
Enrollment, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 9
Written opening statements and bios are available on the U.S. House of
Representatives Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
* Opening Statement; submitted by Rep. Sessions.
The document listed above is available at: docs.house.gov.
(III)
SHIFTING GEARS: MOVING FROM RECOVERY
TO PREVENTION OF IMPROPER PAYMENTS
AND FRAUD
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Pete Sessions
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Sessions, Foxx, Palmer, Burchett, Jack,
Gill, Mfume, Norton, Frost, and Randall.
Also present: Representative Moskowitz.
Mr. SESSIONS. Good morning. The Subcommittee on Government
Operations will come to order, and I want to welcome everyone to
this, what I think, is going to be an important bipartisan hearing
today.
Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any time,
and I recognize myself for making an opening statement.
To our witnesses that are here today and to the people who have
taken time to come here to see today, as well as my colleagues, I
want to really dispense with my opening statement and, without
objection, I will enter that into the record.
But what I would like to say, is that this is a follow-up to the
meetings which we have held for the last few years where there
was active discussion not just about what we were going to do to
recognize what might be considered waste, fraud, or abuse, or
money that was spent by the Federal Government that did not
equal that which it was intended to do, which kept money away
from the real recipients and for people who would have been bene-
fited with congressional intent.
As you will recall, last year, we held what was a meeting in Oc-
tober whereby we had GAO and others who came to speak with us,
and they came up with what might be a 3-year number of their
ideas about inappropriate payments—then, waste, fraud, and
abuse—but things that were paid that we felt like were not permis-
sible or following the intent of the law or the needs of the money.
Mr. Mfume and I, at that time, looked at each other and said,
‘‘We are going to work together. We are going to challenge GAO to
come back to us. We are going to find within the government other
(1)
2
particular people who have talent, data, information, and can lead
us to a better solution.’’
I am pleased to say, Mr. Mfume, I believe this is the beginning
of that turning the corner to where we will then not just work to-
gether but try and discover the things that reside within the gov-
ernment to gain the information that is necessary, and I think to-
day’s hearing will prove that end. So, I am delighted that you are
here. I am going to put my opening statement in the record, but
that is what I wanted to say.
This is about identifying and preventing fraud, improper pay-
ments in Federal programs, and we are going to learn today how
we are better prepared if we work together, if we find a way—and
I think we will—not just to work together but to use the important
elements of this government for data information and lessons
learned. And I would say thank you for being here.
Does the distinguished gentleman wish to have time for an open-
ing statement?
Mr. MFUME. I do.
Mr. SESSIONS. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. MFUME. I do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Good
morning to you.
Good morning to our witnesses who are here.
And I want to just personally thank Chairman Sessions for the
manner in which we continue to meet each other halfway, even
though we are on different sides of the aisle, to come together to
find a way at least to release the Federal Government of some of
its ailments, particularly this whole notion of improper payments,
waste, fraud, and abuse. We did that throughout the 118th Con-
gress, and my colleagues and I on this Subcommittee all remain
laser-focused on combating those matters.
And I think we also have always agreed that this is a non-
partisan matter. No matter where we are in our country or philo-
sophically, we agree that every dollar directed to every program
ought to go to the intended purpose.
From the very beginning of this President’s term, the so-called
Department of Government Efficiency—and some of you know that
I have referred to it as the ‘‘Department of Government Evil’’ for
my own particular purposes because of the way it has affected
working men and working women and their families across this
country.
I think hardworking, dedicated men and women exist in every
congressional district throughout the country, and while there is
still no full complete public accounting on all of them who have
been dismissed other than numbers—we do not know the names
and the faces and the families and the children and the mortgages
and everything else that has been disrupted by this—I have had
no doubt that, among the hundreds of thousands of Federal em-
ployees affected by the ‘‘Fork in the Road’’ email and the mass
firings of probationary staff, that many, many are experiencing the
pain that we do not feel right now.
And that is not to even mention, as I am sure the Chairman
would mention also, the 18 Inspectors General that have been dis-
missed. They were like the sheriffs that were running the town and
doing a damn good job at it and reporting back to this Committee
3
and both to Chairman Sessions and myself on real clear ways of
trying to move us forward deliberately and focused, and I commend
their work. I look forward, hopefully, to the return of some of them,
and I know that their role cannot be understated.
We are already in a situation where 10 of 24 agencies subject to
the Payment Integrity Information Act were not fully compliant
with improper payment reporting requirements as of 2022. It is the
furthest thing from common sense, in my opinion, to fire the In-
spectors General who have a real set of experience and a body of
experience addressing this problem.
As witnesses have discussed in many of our previous hearings on
this issue, particularly last September, combating fraud, improper
payments, and abuse is not as simple as waving a magic wand or
a chain saw. Real progress relies on access to quality data, it
means thoughtful partnership with agency leaders, and it means
investments into the technology and the staff needed to create
proper internal controls to prevent improper payments and fraud.
I was proud to join with many of my colleagues on the Oversight
Committee in introducing, recently, the Taxpayer Funds Oversight
and Accountability Act, which, in many respects, would make im-
portant strides in addressing these challenges.
Simply put, I think we have a real challenge before us, not to
mention the fact that sometimes we are not focusing on some of the
real issues. I would call everyone’s attention to the fact that the
largest agency with the largest budget is still the Pentagon, and we
have witnessed seven straight audits that have failed because of
problems at the Pentagon. I do not know how you can fail seven
straight audits and not become the focus of waste, fraud, and
abuse. That is another story perhaps for another time, but it is
something that continues to cry out for very real attention.
The GAO reported recently a total of 162 billion in improper pay-
ments in governmentwide matters in Fiscal Year 2024, and that
marks a significant reduction—it is almost embarrassing to say
that that is a significant reduction—from the 236 billion in im-
proper payments in Fiscal Year 2023.
In recognition of this shared challenge, Chairman Sessions and
I, in a bipartisan way, worked to discover real pathways to reduc-
ing fraud and to reducing improper payments. This past October,
both he and I sent a joint letter to the GAO requesting that they
review, as was mentioned earlier, the $2.7 trillion in improper pay-
ments and fraud that have occurred since 2003 and provide action-
able recommendations before this Committee.
So, as I conclude, I must mention the importance of staying
grounded in the scope and the breadth and the depth of this prob-
lem. While improper payments and some fraud exists, that does not
mean that the bedrock of social safety net programs like Medicaid,
Medicare, and Social Security should be cut or privatized. The ex-
istence of these problems does not justify in any way mass firings
of workers; failures to pay nonprofit organizations; it does not jus-
tify the fact that the government owes for work done in so many
instances; and that the effort really is moving to destroy many of
the Federal agencies as we have come to know them.
Even despite the claims that Social Security is rife with fraud
and fraudulent payments due to, quote, ‘‘long-dead individuals who
4
are about 133 years of age,’’ that program has a payment accuracy
rate of over 90 percent, and that is according to the Center for
Budget Priorities.
So, as we move forward together, hopefully, with our own dif-
ferences of opinion—but, in an effort to move forward together to
combat waste, fraud, and abuse as we know it and as we are defin-
ing it, I hope that we, as a Congress, will remember that the pur-
pose of this weighty task is not to exploit these problems or to de-
stroy the Federal Government in the process, but to work for a bet-
ter country. And to do that, as the Chairman has said, hand in
hand, working together despite our differences, to come up with a
consensus.
That is what we really want: Consensus approaches that are not
on the extreme left or the extreme right but in the middle where
most people are and in the middle where the problems are so that
we can deal with this issue in a very responsible sort of way and
be able to report back to the American people that we really have
made an impact in dealing with the issues of waste, fraud, and
abuse.
Again, I cannot say enough about Chairman Sessions’ work in
this regard and this Committee’s work. We did not get a lot of at-
tention, but we were in the forefront for the last 2 or 3 years. So,
it is good to know now that people are paying attention. We just
have to make sure that we are doing this the right way and in a
way that is responsible.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would yield back.
Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the gentleman’s dialog. I want to say
that maybe 10 percent or more—I think more—of the American
people want, expect, and need us to work together, and you have
my promise that it will continue to be done and we will work to-
gether.
You have a strong voice. You have a strong idea of what you are
after. But what we are dealing here is something that must be
overtaken. We have to win on this, and it will be a bipartisan ef-
fort. And I think the three witnesses that we have today are shin-
ing examples that can lead the way—not to partisanship but to an-
swers, and I think that is what we seek.
I want to thank your conversation today, and I think that we will
see that also, sir.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you.
I want to request unanimous consent that the gentleman, Mr.
Moskowitz from Florida, be waived on to today’s hearing for the
purpose of asking questions.
Without objection, so ordered.
OK. We are now going to get to the big deal, and the big deal
is our witnesses, who take seriously not only that effort that you
and I and this Subcommittee share but also ideas and answers
leading us to that.
I would first like to introduce Kristen Kociolek. She serves as
Managing Director of the Financial Management and Assurance
team at the GAO. In her role, she oversees issues involving ac-
countability, professionalism, auditing standards, and DoD finan-
cial management and improper payments. Please know that you
5
are being heard, as well as your party, when there are conversa-
tions about DoD.
Next, we have Mr. Dieffenbach. Ken was appointed to the Pan-
demic Response Accountability Committee in June 2024. He brings
over 28 years of experience in the oversight community and has
served in various roles relating to investigation and data analytics.
We also have Jennifer Wagner. She joined the Center for Budget
and Policy Priorities in 2015. She focuses primarily on Medicaid
eligibility and enrollment issues, which certainly highlights some of
the discussions that the American people want us to delve into.
I am delighted that all three of these witnesses are here.
I would now ask that all the witnesses rise. Pursuant to Com-
mittee Rule 9(g), the witnesses will stand as required and raise
their right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testi-
mony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you God?
[Chorus of ayes.]
Mr. SESSIONS. Let the record show that the witnesses answered
in the affirmative.
Thank you very much. You may now take a seat.
I tried to keep my comments short. Mr. Mfume did the same. But
we speak from one voice. We are both delighted that you are here
today.
So, let me remind the witnesses that we have your written state-
ments, and I would encourage each of the staff and the Members
who are here to look through this, if they have not up to now, data
and information about—actual data and actual solutions is what
today’s hearing is going to be about.
So, I want to first make sure that we go right to this. I will let
everybody turn to their information that they have got there.
Ms. Kociolek—I did not get it right yesterday, and I am not going
to get it right today. Please correct me.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Kociolek.
Mr. SESSIONS. Kociolek. Bill had me say Kociolek five times yes-
terday. That was not today. We are delighted that you are here.
Please know this, that we traditionally will follow the 5-minute
rule as we always have, but I think that, as we go through there,
if you want to finish questions or the statements you want to
make. But, as we get into questioning, I am very interested in both
sides, Members and our witnesses, getting to where they want to
get.
And, without further discussion, we will recognize Ms. Kociolek.
STATEMENT OF KRISTEN KOCIOLEK
MANAGING DIRECTOR
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND ASSURANCE
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Sessions,
Ranking Member Mfume, and Members of the Subcommittee.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss the long-
standing and pervasive issue of improper payments and fraud in
the Federal Government.
Whether it involves an established program, or one created to re-
spond to an emergency, improper payments and fraud erode the
6
public trust in government and result in hundreds of billions of dol-
lars lost.
Improper payments and fraud are two distinct concepts that are
related but not interchangeable. Simply put, improper payments
are payment errors, payments that should not have been made, or
payments that were made in the incorrect amount. These could be
overpayments, underpayments, or payments to ineligible recipients.
Fraud involves obtaining something of value through willful mis-
representation, individuals or organizations deliberately lying to
defraud the Federal Government. While all fraudulent payments
are considered improper, not all improper payments are considered
fraud.
Since 2003, Federal agencies have made an estimated $2.8 tril-
lion in improper payments, including an estimated $162 billion in
Fiscal Year 2024. Since these year-to-year estimates are based on
a subset of government programs, 68 programs in 2024, the actual
improper payments amount may be significantly higher.
Last April, we estimated that, based on data from fiscal years
2018 to 2022, the Federal Government annually lost between $233-
and $531 billion or about 3 to 7 percent of Federal spending to
fraud. Our fraud estimate includes all Federal programs, and the
wide range reflects the different risk environments during the 5-
year period, including normal operations and COVID–19 relief pro-
grams and spending. Fraud at this level indicates the importance
of fraud risk management. However, most government spending is
not fraudulent.
While my written statement more fully covers GAO’s wide body
of work in these areas, I will focus this morning on how agencies
and the Congress can work to better prevent improper payments
and fraud.
The best way to reduce improper or fraudulent payments is to
not make them. Preventive controls, as their name implies, are
meant to stop improper and fraudulent payments before they occur.
One key governmentwide preventive control is the use of Treas-
ury’s Do Not Pay system. Do Not Pay consolidates much of the
data matching agencies have done individually to flag potentially
improper or fraudulent payments. Federal agencies and some state
programs can and should leverage Do Not Pay to ensure program
integrity.
Another important action agencies can take is to assign responsi-
bility for tackling improper payments and fraud to senior-level offi-
cials. This helps establish accountability and endows those officials
with the authority to lead and make change.
In our March 2022 testimony before the Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, we recommended 10
actions that Congress could take to increase accountability over im-
proper payments and fraud across the Federal Government. As of
today, these recommendations to Congress remain unaddressed.
To improve transparency and accountability over fraud manage-
ment, we recommended that Congress reinstate the requirement
that agencies report on their anti-fraud controls and fraud risk
management efforts in their annual financial reports. And, to bet-
ter prepare for future emergencies, such as hurricanes, wildfires, or
pandemics, we recommended that Congress require OMB to pro-
7
vide guidance for agencies to proactively develop internal control
plans that will be ready for use in future crises and require agen-
cies to report these plans to OMB and Congress.
Finally, to facilitate data access and data sharing, which is key
to effective prevention, we recommended that Congress consider
amending the Social Security Act to explicitly allow the Social Se-
curity Administration to share its full death data with Treasury’s
Do Not Pay system.
In December 2020, Congress passed legislation requiring the So-
cial Security Administration to share its full death data with
Treasury’s Do Not Pay system for a 3-year pilot period. This re-
quirement is set to expire in December 2026, and we think Con-
gress should make it permanent.
Earlier this year, Treasury reported that data sharing during the
pilot had led to $31 million in improper payments prevented and
recovered over its first 5 months, and the pilot’s projected net ben-
efit is over $215 million for the full 3 years. Congress can make an
immediate impact by ensuring the Do Not Pay system continues to
have access to the Social Security Administration’s full death data.
Continued congressional oversight is critical to ensuring that
agencies address improper payments and fraud in their programs.
Along with the actions detailed in my written statement, Congress
can use a variety of tools—such as hearings and the appropria-
tions, authorization, and oversight processes—to incentivize agen-
cies to improve program integrity.
This concludes my opening statement, and I would be happy to
answer questions.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much.
The distinguished gentleman, Mr. Dieffenbach, you are recog-
nized.
STATEMENT OF KEN DIEFFENBACH
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
PANDEMIC RESPONSE ACCOUNTABILITY COMMITTEE
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Thank you. Chair Sessions, Ranking Member
Mfume, Members of the Subcommittee, it is an honor to be here
today to talk about the critically important topic of preventing
fraud in Federal programs.
This Subcommittee has been at the forefront of bipartisan efforts
to find solutions to reduce fraud and other types of improper pay-
ments. Today’s hearing comes at a critical time because, unless
Congress takes action, one of the most significant tools it has cre-
ated to improve program integrity will be lost.
As the Executive Director of the Pandemic Response Account-
ability Committee, or PRAC, an entity Congress created almost 5
years ago to oversee $5 trillion in relief funding, I can point to un-
told examples where fraudsters stole hundreds of billions of dollars
from taxpayers and the intended beneficiaries of these programs.
As a Federal law enforcement officer who has spent over 28
years bringing to justice fraudsters who stole from Federal pro-
grams, I know firsthand that, unless we invest in cross-agency pre-
vention and enhance data sharing, we will continue to be victim-
ized by increasingly sophisticated and well-resourced bad actors.
Pay and chase is not the solution. Prevention is.
8
To be clear, agencies have the primary responsibility to prevent
fraud, but the PRAC and the OIGs also play an important role.
Since its formation in 2020, the PRAC has time and again alerted
Federal agencies, Congress, and the American public to the lessons
learned from the pandemic and our recommendations to help
strengthen Federal programs. For example, we issued a fraud alert
on the use of suspicious Social Security numbers in obtaining over
$5.4 billion in SBA relief programs.
We have not only identified potential fraud, but we are also ac-
tively working to recover stolen funds. We are partnering with 48
Federal law enforcement agencies to support over a thousand in-
vestigations related to over $2.4 billion in potential losses.
As we will discuss today, the time to prepare for the next dis-
aster is now, not when new funds start flowing. We must act on
these lessons learned. For example, we must address obvious
anomalies, such as Social Security numbers that have never been
issued or issued to people who are now deceased, dates of birth in-
dicating an applicant is 10 or 110 years old, applicants who have
already applied in five other states, or applicants who use names
like Charlie Chaplin, Abraham Lincoln, or Foghorn Leghorn, as at
least three people did in pandemic programs. Those three were
stopped before the money was disbursed, let me assure you.
The government must pause and more closely review suspect
claims before money is disbursed. We must look across multiple
programs for red flags, as fraudsters do not follow our government
organizational charts. They steal from wherever it is easiest to
steal. We must also responsibly leverage more data, especially data
already in the possession of the government, to identify suspicious
patterns and trends indicative of fraud schemes.
Today, the PRAC has the capacity, infrastructure, relationships,
and talent to conduct pre-award vetting and a more complex net-
work and trend analysis. We know from our work that fraudsters
can apply to all 50 states and territories from behind one keyboard.
They can hit multiple Federal programs using the same false infor-
mation. They can outsource these tasks to artificial intelligence and
bots.
But the PRAC is scheduled to sunset in September 2025, and we
are only 2 months away from having to begin deleting our data
that we have collected and curated over the last 5 years. This in-
cludes over 60 major data sources and some 1.7 billion data points.
We are also concerned about losing more of our staff, whose out-
standing analytical expertise is in great demand.
We will soon reach the point of no return in which rebuilding
this capacity would take several months, if not years, and a signifi-
cant new investment of taxpayer dollars. The U.S. Government Ac-
countability Office has expressed strong support for the PRAC and
estimated that our analytics capability could result in an annual fi-
nancial benefit of a billion dollars or more a year.
If the PRAC ceases operations in September, the next time the
government responds to a natural disaster, an economic crisis, or
another event where we are quickly disbursing benefits to people
in need, fraudsters will again swoop in and steal. We will then in-
evitably ask ourselves, how did we lose so much money to fraud?
9
If this happens, it will be because we chose not to be prepared,
and we chose not to invest in fraud prevention and increased data
sharing. Instead, we should continue the investment that Congress
has made in the PRAC, which has a proven track record and a
demonstrated return on investment. American taxpayers deserve
nothing less.
I look forward to your questions.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much.
For the audience that may be watching, that is the Pandemic Re-
sponse Accountability Committee that was referred to as PRAC.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Wagner, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER WAGNER
DIRECTOR OF MEDICAID ELIGIBILITY AND ENROLLMENT
CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES
Ms. WAGNER. Chairman Sessions, Ranking Member Mfume, and
Members of the Government Operations Subcommittee, I am hon-
ored to be here today to discuss something I have spent over 20
years working on: improving government systems to get the right
benefits to eligible people in a streamlined and accurate way.
I started my career as a food-stamp case worker in North Caro-
lina and then worked for the Illinois Department of Human Serv-
ices before joining CBPP. I am going to focus today on Medicaid
and SNAP, specifically on three key points.
First, Medicaid and SNAP have a rigorous eligibility verification
process, and the vast majority of people are eligible for the benefits
they receive. Mistakes are made, but most improper payments are
paperwork issues, not fraud.
Second, running an accurate program means making sure eligi-
ble people can get and keep benefits. When we talk about program
integrity and accuracy, we need to talk about how adding red tape
can harm eligible families.
And, third, there are effective ways to reduce improper payments
and improve program integrity, but some of the solutions proposed
do not match the problems. They don’t solve improper payments
and will increase errors.
Let us dig in. First, nearly all of the people enrolled in SNAP
and Medicaid are eligible for their benefits. Applicants fill out com-
plex forms with details about their household, expenses, and in-
come. Agencies verify that information against Federal, state, and
commercial data bases. If the application and data base do not
match, the applicant must send verification, like a pay stub.
Improper payments are not the same as fraud and are primarily
caused by paperwork errors. For example, a Medicaid worker might
check a data base to verify an applicant’s eligibility but not capture
and retain the data viewed in that moment. When a reviewer
comes and looks at that case months later, they cannot confirm the
case is correct because they cannot see what the worker looked at
when the case was approved. There is no indication that the appli-
cant is not eligible, but since the paperwork is missing, it is consid-
ered an improper payment. This is a technical problem, not a fraud
problem.
10
Second, it is important to acknowledge one shortcoming of im-
proper payment measures: They only consider those who receive
benefits. They do not consider those who are eligible but could not
enroll due to confusing notices or agency mistakes. We must keep
this in mind when evaluating solutions to improper payments,
which brings me to my third point.
Many proposed solutions do not match the problems and will not
reduce improper payments or improve accuracy. For example, re-
quiring Medicaid renewals every 6 months instead of every year
will cause more problems than it solves. More paperwork will lead
eligible enrollees to miss out on benefits for procedural reasons, not
because they do not qualify for the program but because they do
not receive a return notice or the agency does not process that pa-
perwork timely. And more work for already overwhelmed state
staff will lead to more mistakes and more improper payments.
So, what would work? The Government Accountability Office
identified two strategies that have been successful in reducing im-
proper payments: establishing accountability and facilitating inter-
nal collaboration and providing technology, tools, and training tar-
geted to root causes.
Federal agencies overseeing SNAP and Medicaid need sufficient
staff in key roles to make this happen, such as Inspectors General
to audit eligibility determinations and staff to provide technical as-
sistance and hold states accountable for fixing the issues that are
discovered in audits.
We saw this approach work. Federal agencies recently helped
states better implement the requirement to conduct ex parte re-
newals, which happen when data sources confirm ongoing eligi-
bility and enrollees do not have to fill out complex paperwork to
renew. The United States Digital Services worked with states, and
more than 5 million people were renewed for coverage with less red
tape last year.
Another solution is the Medicaid eligibility enrollment rule, final-
ized in April 2024, which updates outdated regulations on case
record maintenance and will substantially reduce the frequency of
improper payment resulting from inadequate records.
It is not an easy task to address improper payments in large pro-
grams serving millions of people. Proposals that suggest billions of
dollars can easily be saved, do not address improper payments and
would result in cutting eligible people off from vital help. But em-
bracing solutions that match the actual problems can bring us clos-
er to the goal of getting the right benefits to eligible people in a
streamlined and accurate way.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to
your questions.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much.
Mr. Mfume, you heard me say that I felt like our witnesses all
were not only vital to our decision-making but have appeared in a
way to give us answers to these problems.
Thank you very much. I want to thank each of our witnesses.
I am first going to go to the distinguished gentlewoman from
North Carolina, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx. The gentlewoman is
recognized.
11
Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank our witnesses
for being here today.
Ms. Kociolek, the Payment Integrity Information Act codified the
Do Not Pay initiative, which provides agencies with access to cer-
tain data bases that can assist in preventing improper payments
and requires a review of the available data bases prior to the re-
lease of funds. Despite this requirement, it is unclear that agencies
are utilizing the Do Not Pay system. For example, the Department
of Transportation Inspector General reported in November 2023
that the agency did not use the Do Not Pay portal in prepayment
processes as the law requires.
In your opinion, why do agencies not use all the tools at their
disposal to prevent improper payments, and do you believe that
there are ways to improve the Do Not Pay system?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Thank you. Yes. I think there are ways to im-
prove the Do Not Pay system. As I mentioned, making sure that
full death master file is in there and that all relevant data sources
are in there is key to making sure that that source of information
is as complete and reliable as it can be.
A way to encourage agencies to use it is really to think about
how you would do reporting, I think. Right now, agencies kind of
report on the back end of what went wrong. Thinking about how
you would have agencies report about preventing.
So, for instance, the Do Not Pay system and Treasury payment
integrity tools can flag payments that potentially would have indi-
cators that they may be improper. However, as noted, it really is
up to the agencies to make decisions about whether a payment will
be made.
You could consider having agencies report on when those flags
are not upheld, for example. If something is flagged in Do Not Pay
but a payment is made anyway, having agencies track that, iden-
tify that, and report back when that is happening would help folks
determine if there are instances where the payment should go
ahead anyway or if truly that payment should have been stopped.
Ms. FOXX. Let me follow up with another question for you and
Mr. Dieffenbach.
Once an improper payment is made, what can an agency do to
recover the payment, and how much does it cost in human hours
and dollars to recoup an improper payment? First you, Ms.
Kociolek.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Sure. There are requirements for agencies to at-
tempt to recover improper payments, and I believe it is up to the
agencies to determine when it is cost-beneficial to do so.
So, there can be instances where an agency may determine it is
not cost-beneficial to pursue all avenues in recovering that. You
would hope that agencies would, but I think it is left to their deter-
mination to determine when it is cost-beneficial.
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
Agencies have a number of options for trying to recover improper
payments. There are administrative possibilities or options. The
Congress did just pass the Administrative False Claims Act in De-
cember, which is a significant new tool for agencies and OIGs to
work with jointly that allows agencies to go through a very rig-
12
orous process where they can then recover funds and damages in
some instances.
But, to your point, recovering funds through the judicial sys-
tem—the pay-and-chase model we have now—is exorbitantly ex-
pensive, which is why we and others in this hearing are focused
on the prevention piece because it is very expensive to do any of
those recovery actions.
Ms. FOXX. So, what investments could agencies take to prevent
improper payments? Could investments in artificial intelligence
help lower the improper payment rate? Again, what we want to do
is not have the payment go out to begin with by using what is
available to the agencies now.
So, I will start with you, Mr. Dieffenbach.
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Yes. So, technology is part of the solution. An-
other piece of it is culture, is ownership, and the Inspector General
Act was passed in 1978 to create this community of watchdogs to
prevent fraud. However, before 1978 and today, the agencies have
the primary responsibility to do those things, to resource things
properly, to explore technology that you just mentioned, and to en-
sure that they are doing good risk assessments and they are fol-
lowing through on those to make sure they are mitigating the big-
gest risks in their programs.
Ms. FOXX. Ms. Kociolek, any further comments?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Yes. So, as we mentioned, prevention is really the
key in this and having the right data. So, artificial intelligence can
be helpful if you have the right data in the system. So, we do have
recommendations to encourage agencies to collect all the necessary
information that is needed to ensure the data bases are complete,
that they are accurate. If you are using artificial intelligence and
other data-mining tools but you have inaccurate or unreliable data
in the systems, that is not going to be very helpful.
Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman yields
back her time.
Mr. Mfume, the gentleman is recognized.
Mr. MFUME. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I have got a couple
quick questions. I know we are a smaller committee, and I am hop-
ing that we might even get a second round, and I want to obviously
defer to both the Members here on my side of the aisle.
I do want to be redundant—maybe deliberately redundant—
about a few things. No. 1, I appreciated the testimony that nearly
all Medicaid and SNAP recipients are eligible for benefits, which
would explode the myth that has been circulating that people are
getting things that are not eligible.
I want to underscore again: What I heard was that most im-
proper payments are due to paperwork, paperwork errors, and not
necessarily conniving persons trying to find a way to get a check.
However, what I think I want to stop along more than anything
else is the notion that was just annunciated that we have got to
stop it before it starts.
And, Mr. Dieffenbach, I appreciate your comments that we can-
not play the game of pay and chase. That will go on forever, de-
plete resources, and frustrate everybody.
13
I do want to ask if the 10 recommendations that you presented
in your Senate testimony can be made available. I do not know
that I have them, but I would like very much to see them.
And one overarching question, and then I am going to get out of
the way and yield to some of my colleagues, Mr. Chairman.
Can all of you, individually or collectively, give me your assess-
ment of what has happened and what will happen now that all
these Inspectors General are no longer in place to do the good job
that they were doing to point out the crooks and the bad guys and
to follow up with bodies like this, both in the House and Senate,
that would allow us the ability to do what we have been able to
do in a bipartisan way? I know, I think, what the effect is, but I
need to hear it from the three of you. Any of you.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Sure. I can start.
So, certainly, the Inspectors General play a key oversight role.
They have responsibilities related to improper payments.
Beyond that, they do audits of the programs, day in and day out,
and can be very helpful in identifying some of the root causes that
may lead to improper payments in the programs. And then, also,
they are really helpful in coming up with solutions once they iden-
tify those root causes, identifying recommendations that the agen-
cies can take.
So, certainly, the lack of their presence in some of the agencies
would have a significant impact on——
Mr. MFUME. And, in many of the agencies—and I am just trying
to figure out—now that they are gone, what do we do? I mean,
what are agencies faced with, and is there a greater propensity for
the kind of fraud and abuse that we have seen?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. So, Congressman Mfume, the loss in the In-
spectors General was a great loss on a leadership level, on a pro-
ductivity level. Our vice chair of the PRAC, Paul Martin, was the
USAID Inspector General who was dismissed, and we greatly miss
his leadership.
I think the biggest thing for the Congress is you are going to
have less transparency and less visibility on what is actually occur-
ring in agencies because that is—one of the hallmark principles
when Congress set up the Inspector General Act was to give you
and the taxpaying public more visibility and transparency and an
objective view of what exactly is going on. So, I think you are going
to have reduced visibility.
Mr. MFUME. Ms. Wagner?
Ms. WAGNER. And, just to add an example to what my colleagues
have said here, the HHS OIG is really important in supporting and
funding state Medicaid fraud control units that investigate and
prosecute Medicaid provider fraud. As I indicated, beneficiary fraud
is very low in these programs, but provider fraud is common. In
Fiscal Year 2023, these units recovered $1.2 billion in criminal pen-
alties and civil judgments.
And, also, the IGs in HHS would audit eligibility determination
processes, and they were very effective in identifying major issues
in states, such as duplicate payments to managed care organiza-
tions, incorrect interpretations of Federal policy, and case worker
errors. So, identifying these problems and working with the states
14
to get them addressed is really a key role that is diminished right
now.
Mr. MFUME. Yes. I think it would be fair to say that their dis-
missal has clearly exacerbated a problem that is clearly out of con-
trol now.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you very much.
Mr. BURCHETT. Mr. Chairman, let me ask a question real quick.
A procedural question.
Mr. SESSIONS. One moment please, sir. Thank you very much.
Does the gentleman have a question?
Mr. BURCHETT. Well, no. I was wondering if I could yield Mr.
Mfume a minute of my time. I was enjoying his line of questioning.
Mr. SESSIONS. As soon as we get to you, I bet he will take that
and even more.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. OK. I just wanted to make sure. I am sorry.
Mr. SESSIONS. Yes, sir. As the gentleman does know, the Chair-
man wants us to get to the bottom of this, and I do not intend to
cut us off. As long as we are staying in the margins, I think we
are better off. I keep we are better off when someone like you does
yield time to learn more about what is on someone else’s mind.
Thank you very much.
I will now move to——
Mr. BURCHETT. I apologize.
Mr. SESSIONS. No, you are great. You are great. I am just saying
I do want to when we get to you.
The gentleman, Chairman Palmer, is recognized.
Mr. PALMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Kociolek, in 2002, Congress passed the Improper Payments
Information Act. In 2010, Congress passed the Improper Payments
Elimination and Recovery Act. In 2012, Congress passed two more
bills: the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Improve-
ment Act and the Improper Payments Transparency Act.
Yet, GAO said that the Federal Government is losing between
$233-to $521 billion per year. If you just split the difference, that
is $377 billion. Over a 10-year window, that is $3.7 trillion, not
counting the interest that we are having to pay.
And, in regard to the Inspectors General, it sounds like we are
not going to miss the Inspector General. I do not mean to be
dismissive of that. I have great high regard for the Inspectors Gen-
eral. But, in terms of actually lowering our improper payment rate,
it keeps going up year after year. How do you explain that?
Oh, sorry. I am looking at the wrong person. I need to sit up
straight so I can see the names.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. No worries.
Mr. PALMER. OK. Go ahead.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. I think we really need to get back to basics and
having internal control in payment processes. As you noted, there
has been numerous amounts of legislation adding on requirements,
reporting improper payments, but we really need to get back to the
fundamentals of having internal controls in payment processes, un-
derstanding what the root causes are for the improper payments
going out and, focusing on that, requiring agencies to report their
plans for prevention to you and having accountability for having
those prevention plans in place.
15
Mr. PALMER. Isn’t the problem, though, here, the failure to have
enforcement in any of these bills? I have been working on it since
I have been in Congress. I believe I might have been the first one
to get the Budget Committee to really take into account improper
payments. I have been working with Mr. Dodaro this whole time
on it, and it is not getting better.
As a matter of fact, in Fiscal Year 2024, there were 16 agencies
that reported a total of about $162 billion in improper payments.
When you dig down into it, about 54 or 55 percent of the improper
payment problem is administrative error, failure to verify eligi-
bility, and antiquated data systems, which brings me to Mr. Musk.
And I know there is a lot of consternation about what they are
doing, but, literally, he has brought in some computer experts with
21st century technology and done better oversight of the Federal
Government in the last 6 weeks than we have done in the last 40
years. I mean, isn’t that one of the biggest problems we have with
improper payments, is that we have got antiquated data systems,
and we do not have the 21st century technology we need to do over-
sight—proper oversight?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Having reliable data is very important. Having
accurate, reliable, complete data in the systems to be able to do
those integrity checks is critical, yes.
Mr. PALMER. Well, after we passed the Improper Payments
Elimination and Recovery Improvement Act, I know of one outside
company that was brought in that did some analysis of Department
of Labor contracts and found millions of dollars in fraud, overpay-
ments, and other moneys that should have come back to the Fed-
eral Government through credits that were not recovered, and
when this was disclosed, the Department of Labor at that time ba-
sically waved it off as disinterested. Isn’t that a problem?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. The pay-and-chase model is a problem. Trying to
recover the payments after the fact is much less effective.
Mr. PALMER. So, what we need to do is focus on stopping it on
the front end.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Absolutely.
Mr. PALMER. And that is where we need the improvements in
technology and where we need the investment in technology.
This is a huge issue when you are reporting 16 agencies are ac-
counting for $162 billion. In a 10-year window, that is $1.6 trillion.
And we are running a deficit of over $2 trillion every year. If you
just look at the totality of it, $377 billion—that is $3.77 trillion, not
counting the interest we are paying on that money because every
dollar we send out improperly is a borrowed dollar.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. SESSIONS. The gentleman yields back his time. Thank you
very much.
The distinguished gentlewoman from Washington, DC, is recog-
nized.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just days after he took office, President Trump summarily fired
17 Inspectors General across 18 positions in the dead of the night.
Inspectors General fulfill a vital oversight and accountability func-
tion in the government, including to identifying and preventing im-
proper payments. IGs are also responsible for keeping Congress in-
16
formed of fraud and other serious problems and informing us about
progress in implementing solutions. As we consider ways to attack
the problem of improper payments, it is critical that we do not un-
dermine these officials who serve as our partners in this fight.
Ms. Wagner, I am aware that much of your work has focused on
the challenges that states may have in complying with complex re-
quirements for Federal payments programs. How do Inspectors
General help to identify and address these problems?
Ms. WAGNER. Inspectors General play a critical role in auditing
state operations. States are trying to run an accurate program, but
they have many pressures on them, and they sometimes make mis-
takes in their policy, in their operations, in their systems. And au-
dits, through Inspectors General and others, come in and identify
these mistakes and lift them up and hold the state accountable for
addressing these. So, it is really a critical role when we are looking
to improve improper payments and to get benefits to eligible peo-
ple.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you.
Ms. Kociolek, how does the firing of Inspectors General affect In-
spector General Offices’ ability to address and prevent improper
payments?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. The role the Inspectors General plays is critical.
One of the other things, they are often the first line of defense in
investigating allegations of fraud and improper payments. So, with-
out having, you know, strong Inspector General presence in there,
that can certainly be an impediment. They are also an objective
voice in identifying problems and doing investigations. So, cer-
tainly, having a very strong Inspector General role is critical.
Ms. NORTON. Inspectors General use rigorous, evidence-based ap-
proaches to target fraud. This is important because a reckless ap-
proach to fighting fraud risks collateral damage. It could keep Fed-
eral assistance from going to those who most are in need of it.
GAO’s fraud risk management framework notes that agencies
should consider the cost of fraud controls when designing systems,
including potential delays for illegitimate applicants.
Ms. Kociolek, how does the work of Inspectors General ensure
that people get the benefit for which they are eligible?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Certainly, the role they play in doing the various
program audits—so, certainly, they have a role in improper pay-
ments, but they also, as I mentioned, you know, do program audits
throughout the year: Looking at the operations of the various pro-
grams, are they being executed efficiently and effectively to make
sure that the proper recipients are receiving the benefits that they
are entitled to.
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Dieffenbach, the Inspectors General serving on
the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee have done great
work in identifying improper payments throughout our pandemic
response. What has been the impact of President Trump’s purge of
so many Inspectors General been on the Committee’s work and ca-
pacity going forward?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Well, we have lost, again, the leadership and
the institutional knowledge of individual Inspectors General, but
the Offices of Inspectors General still exist and are fully func-
tioning. We work with them day in and day out on investigations.
17
And we are, of course, an independent committee within the
oversight community—the PRAC—that does operational data ana-
lytics literally every day to support investigations to proactively
find problems and to issue reports on lessons learned and preven-
tive measures that agencies can follow going forward.
So, we are continuing to do our important work to support the
OIGs and to be a centralized hub, if you will, for analytics to sup-
port the OIGs that are smaller and do not have their own capabili-
ties.
Ms. NORTON. Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much, the distinguished gentle-
woman. We are delighted that you are here, and as you have
proved in your service, we all want to, as well as Mr. Mfume and
your side, want to stop improper payments and move to the areas
that they would be needed.
We now would move to the distinguished gentleman, Mr. Gill,
from Texas. You are recognized.
Mr. GILL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for holding this
hearing today.
Ms. Kociolek, thank you for being here as well. Could you remind
us, in Fiscal Year 2024, what was the amount of improper pay-
ments that were sent out?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. One-hundred-sixty-two billion dollars.
Mr. GILL. OK. And which agencies were primarily responsible for
that?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Some of the programs that had the largest dollar
amounts were Medicare and Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credit.
Those are some of the larger ones.
Mr. GILL. And how much do you guys at the GAO estimate we
lose in fraud every year?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. We did a fraud estimate for looking at data for
years 2018 through 2022, and we came up with an estimate of
$230-to $250 billion annually.
Mr. GILL. In what agencies do you primarily see fraud? Where
do you see it the most?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. That estimate was based across all programs.
Mr. GILL. OK. Got it. Let us just use a specific example. If I am
a fraudster and I want to collect unemployment checks that I
should not be receiving and I steal somebody else’s identity to do
that and I apply to the Department of Labor, what are the proc-
esses that you would expect to see the Department of Labor go
through to ensure that I do not improperly or fraudulently receive
a check?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. So, unemployment insurance is an interesting
one. It’s a Federal-state partnership program. So, there are respon-
sibilities at the Federal level and at the state level.
As I mentioned, really having those preventive controls in place
and doing those data-matching checks are some of the key controls
that you could expect to see—to have an entity have in place, and
in this case, you need to have those types of controls in place at
the state and at the Federal level.
Mr. GILL. What do we actually see? On a realistic basis, how
often are some of these checks actually applied?
18
Ms. KOCIOLEK. We have seen instances and have recommenda-
tions for unemployment, I believe, where there could be additional
use by the states of some of those data checks, and I believe we
have some recommendations that there could be requirements to
have the states be required to do that data matching.
Mr. GILL. But they are not doing it right now?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Right now, it is encouraged, but we have found
instances where in all cases that is not being done, and that can
be a root cause of some of these improper payments.
Mr. GILL. So, in other words, we are mailing out checks without
verifying who they are going to?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. In some cases.
Mr. GILL. Got it. And what are the consequences for agency
heads as they are mailing out American taxpayer dollars without
verifying who they are going to?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. The consequence is that—anytime there is im-
proper payments or fraud or money going out for not the intended
purpose, that’s money that could be going to rightful recipients and
used for other purposes.
Mr. GILL. Right. But, I mean, from an incentive standpoint on
the agency level, is there any consequence for either employees at
the agency or agency heads for mailing out checks fraudulently?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. One of the things we have recommended is hav-
ing an accountable official at the agencies.
Mr. GILL. But, I mean, right now—as opposed to the rec-
ommendations, right now, are there—is there anything to hold
these people accountable?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Agencies are supposed to have an accountable of-
ficial to oversee this, but we have——
Mr. GILL. Right. But what is the accountability structure? Do
they receive less bonuses, for instance? Are they fired? What is
holding them accountable?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. I think that is determined by the agency as to
how that mechanism is 100 percent set up. But, certainly, Congress
can have accountability mechanisms——
Mr. GILL. What do you see? Have you ever seen an agency head
get fired, for instance, for mailing out billions of dollars in fraudu-
lent checks?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. I have not seen that.
Mr. GILL. Got it. OK. And, once we mail these checks out, is
there any way of clawing this money back and holding the
fraudsters accountable?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. That is what we were saying. The pay-and-chase
model is not generally effective. There are requirements that, any-
time there is an improper payment, agencies are supposed to at-
tempt to get that money back, but we have found that the percent-
age that you get back when you are following that model as op-
posed to not having to go out—preventing it is, by far, much more
effective.
Mr. GILL. Right. Right. Completely agree.
It seems to me that we have got an overextended, bureaucratic,
administrative leviathan that is mailing out American taxpayer
dollars fraudulently with virtually no accountability at all, bank-
rupting the American people with impunity, and this is from a Fed-
19
eral Government that ostensibly works in the interest of American
citizens that is instead wasting our taxpayer dollars on a scale that
is difficult to fathom. I think this is precisely why we need DOGE
so badly to get this nonsense under control.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back, and thank you very
much.
Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the gentleman’s questions.
The distinguished gentlewoman from Washington, Ms. Randall,
is recognized.
Ms. RANDALL. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you as well to our witnesses for taking the time to
be here today and share your expertise.
You know, I have been pretty open about sharing my sister
Olivia’s story. She was born with really complex disabilities and
was able to receive the care she needed because of Medicaid. And
she was one of an estimated 2.4 million Washingtonians enrolled
in Apple Health, our state Medicaid program. And so, ensuring
that we are protecting that program is very important to me, not
just personally but on behalf of all of my constituents.
And I think I share the goals of so many of my colleagues here
to ensure that we are using taxpayer dollars efficiently to provide
essential services to our neighbors who need them, but what we
may have some disagreement on is how to make the Federal Gov-
ernment and our programs work better for the American people.
You know, my colleague talked about fraudsters. And, certainly,
there is some fraud in some of our programs, some improper pay-
ments, but I think what we also have to underscore is the indi-
vidual people that are trying to access these programs. And we had
a subcommittee hearing on Health Care and Financial Services a
week or two ago in which we collectively and bipartisanly discussed
and understood the barriers that exist for many families trying to
access Medicaid, including and especially those married couples
that have a hard time getting the healthcare that they need to be
successful.
But I want to reiterate the difference between fraud and people
perpetuating fraud and the improper payments. And, Ms. Wagner,
could you reiterate, is it true that the vast majority of improper
payments are paperwork issues, not fraud?
Ms. WAGNER. Yes, that is correct. It is usually a mistake in the
process when you talk about a program like Medicaid. It could
mean an eligibility worker did not follow correct procedures or the
participant was issued the wrong amount of benefits. But it is often
an error, an inadvertent error, by the household or a mistake by
the agency staff or system.
The incidence of fraud, which is intentional deceit to gain a ben-
efit, the incident of beneficiary fraud is very low on these pro-
grams.
Ms. RANDALL. Yes. Thank you.
You know, I have experienced in my family and heard so many
anecdotes from Washingtonians, particularly parents of severely
disabled children who have this, like, stack of paperwork on their
counters, who feel like they need to be attorneys in order to access
the system, to provide healthcare for their kids, and who are over-
whelmed so often with late nights, little sleep, worry about what,
20
you know, new medication their kids need to be on, what specialist
appointment they need to get into, who spend so many hours on
the phone, appealing denials of claims, trying to get in to an ap-
pointment with someone, trying to get answers for their kid and
take care of them, while many of them also have another day job.
You know, to characterize these parents as fraudsters or to try
and lump in, you know, individuals who are just trying to stay
alive in so many cases, feels really challenging to me.
And, you know, I talked to the Health Care Authority in Wash-
ington, our agency responsible for administrating Medicaid, and be-
cause of Washington’s fraud-abuse detection system, which I sup-
ported funding for, as a member of the State Senate, they have un-
covered 35 to 40 credible allegations of fraud. That is 35 to 40 out
of 20 million claims that they receive a year, and to do that math
for us, it is 0.0002 percent of fraudulent claims.
And, you know, none of us are claiming that no fraud exists, but
I think we need to keep in mind the scale of the problem here and
who is perpetrating the incorrect payments.
I also want to raise one thing that the Health Care Authority
suggested might be helpful as we talk about efficiencies in govern-
ment, and they said that there is a Federal system to which the
states do not have immediate access, to understand whether folks
are concurrently enrolled in Medicaid programs from one state to
the other.
Now, I know there is—we will have, in the next couple of years,
some changes to that data base to monitor when someone moves
and changes their address, but it does not allow agencies, like the
Health Care Authority in Washington, to track whether there is
concurrent enrollment. And that would be something that I would
love the chance to work on with my colleagues.
And I yield my time.
Mr. SESSIONS. The gentlewoman yields back her time. Thank you
very much.
We move to the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee, Mr.
Burchett.
Mr. BURCHETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, ma’am, for sharing that story about your sister.
I did not know that. Gave me a lot to think about.
Ms. Kociolek—is that correct? Did I get that close?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Yes.
Mr. BURCHETT. You got Kweisi Mfume and Tim Burchett up
here. Nobody gets our names right, and I probably did not get his
name right.
So, let me ask you a question, ma’am, if I can see through this
big head of hair right here in front of me. What are some of the
key issues that have prevented these agencies from prioritizing
prevention of improper payments and fraud? And I wish you would
also talk a little bit about just human error, how that plays into
this.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Yes, so there certainly can be human error. And
I just wanted to clarify, the fraud—to be sure, fraud is a big prob-
lem. The fraud numbers that we estimated over those years was
about 3 to 7 percent of the funding, but to be sure, as we noted,
21
you know, any amount of fraud is money not going to the intended
purpose.
So, some of the key issues, I think, that prevent folks from being
able to effectively put the right controls in place does have to do
with some data sharing, some access, having—truly understanding
the eligibility requirements, the data attributes that should be
checked, and then having that right information to be able to do
that checking, to make sure that the payments are valid, going to
the right person is really what is critical and can be some of the
key challenges and issues that agencies face.
Mr. BURCHETT. The agencies in Fiscal Year 2024, they collec-
tively estimated approximately $161.5 billion in improper pay-
ments. Do you think Congress can get to the point where we can
stop that?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. I think the goal is to reduce that. You will prob-
ably never get rid of the risk of fraud. It is innate in all programs,
but there should be a concerted effort to have that as low as pos-
sible and have the right preventative controls in place to not leave
so much money on the table to that.
Mr. BURCHETT. I guess in this case it is the original sin, so to
speak.
How many agencies and programs are using the GAO’s Fraud
Risk Framework now? And why aren’t they using it, the ones that
aren’t?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. You know, I do not know if we know the true rea-
son why not all of them are using it. We do certainly have a rec-
ommendation to Congress to require agencies to use that. We think
it is a critical technology.
Mr. BURCHETT. And they are currently not required to follow
that?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Not specifically.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. Thank you.
What can we do to enable that these agencies recover overpay-
ments, or are they just gone?
I always hear people say, oh, we are going to claw that back. I
was in the legislature in Tennessee for 16 years, and I never saw—
I mean, it is hook or crook, you know. It is a bogus corporation or
something got money somehow, or some criminal, and they are in
jail. They are not paying it back. They are getting——
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Right.
Mr. BURCHETT [continuing]. Twenty cents an hour stamping out
license plates.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. And that is the challenge. In many cases it is not
easy to get that money back.
Mr. BURCHETT. OK. Thank you.
And I want to yield the rest of my time to my dear friend, Mr.
Mfume, if that is all right.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MFUME. Well, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.
Totally unnecessary, but——
Mr. BURCHETT. And you are not making any points calling me
a gentleman.
Mr. MFUME. Mr. Burchett and myself are like a guitar and a fid-
dle. We both have strings but we make different sounds. And we
22
have worked together whenever we can. Usually, we are 100 per-
cent on different sides of the aisle, but in moments like this, on
something like this, I appreciate the gentleman for yielding, appre-
ciate his sense of humor and the ability to work with him.
I do want to just go to two quick things that I heard that I do
not want to have fall to the wayside and get out of the way for the
other Members, particularly Mr. Frost on our side and whoever,
Mr. Chairman, you have next coming up.
Mr. Palmer made a good point, and I am really saddened that
he is not here, because he talked about this whole enforcement
mechanism and whether or not there is any enforcement mecha-
nism, and without an enforcement mechanism, how can you expect
agencies or agency heads to do anything at all if we are not going
to enforce existing law or practice.
And the other interesting thing was Mr. Gill who mentioned con-
sequences to agency heads, which I think is something that we
ought to talk about, particularly the flip side of that, which is in-
centives to agency heads. And I do not know if we are providing
them right now.
So, if I am running agency A, B, or C, I see a problem, and I
work my tail off to get it fixed so that improper payments are not
going out, seems to me there ought to be some incentive there for
agency heads to do that, and there ought to be a hammer on the
other side for agency heads who fail to do it at all.
So, I just wanted to go back to both of those points. I want to
thank the gentleman—I will call him a gentleman, again—from
Tennessee, Mr. Burchett, for yielding this time.
And I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Burchett yields back his time. Thank you for
the distinguished gentleman.
We would now recognize the distinguished gentleman from Geor-
gia, Mr. Jack.
Mr. JACK. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And first and foremost, if I could follow on that effective line of
statement from Mr. Mfume and that potential line of questioning,
I was also inspired by Mr. Palmer’s statements as it relates to en-
forcement.
If I could just go down the line, what say you about enhancing
the enforcement capability, whether through legislative action or
executive action?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Yes. So, I think holding people accountable is
critical for doing anything but in this case particularly. Certainly,
I think agencies should have accountable officials and hold those
people accountable. And like I mentioned, Congress can have an ac-
countability role too through the appropriations process, through
having agencies and officials report on their preventative controls
that they are putting in place to hold them accountable and dem-
onstrate how they are doing that.
Mr. JACK. Thank you.
Mr. Dieffenbach?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Thank you for the question.
So, we spent the last 5 years at the PRAC, developing and learn-
ing lessons learned. We put out a program, a Blueprint for program
integrity. So, agencies need to operationalize that and follow that.
23
We have perfected ways to find simple frauds and more complex
frauds. So, I think one of the answers is they need to have the tools
to be able to detect, again, the simple noneligibility issues, but also
the more complex, hidden, criminal enterprises, sometimes inter-
national criminal enterprises, which we have done a good job—I
think a phenomenal job—of finding new ways to do that with big
data.
Mr. JACK. Wonderful.
Ms. Wagner?
Ms. WAGNER. The key to preventing improper payments and re-
ducing fraud is information and technical assistance to the states.
States are trying to run a good program. They do not want head-
lines. They do not want their money going to the wrong people.
And so, by supporting them in these efforts with funds with Fed-
eral support, we can go much further.
Penalizing them, massive cuts to these programs, will actually go
against this purpose and will lead to increased improper payments.
Mr. JACK. Thank you all.
Just in closing, a lot of my colleagues have asked very effective
questions today, but I love history and I would love, if I could, Ms.
Kociolek, I think we understand, since 2004, 2003, we have seen
$2.8 trillion in improper payments. I think that is from GAO. Is
that correct?
And would you say, has there been an influx in recent years? If
you were to try to catalog year by year, I mean, I am trying to un-
derstand the history of how this ramped up, and, you know, is this
something that was happening in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s? Have
you seen it just really skyrocket as government’s grown and gov-
ernment programs have grown? Would love for you to just offer
some thoughts on the history of how we got here.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Yes. I think certainly some of the challenges, and
as we mentioned, the importance of having really foundational,
good, internal controls is critical. So that over the years, as emer-
gencies are going to arise, you have those foundational controls in
place. You have plans and controls ready to go.
I think, you know, as agencies and the government is forced to
function in dynamic ways, if you do not have those foundations in
place, that is when I think you see that fluctuation, and that just
exacerbates the problem.
Mr. JACK. And, sir, if you want to comment on the history of how
we got here.
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. Please. The threat is always evolving. The
friction for getting public benefits is gone. Anyone with a computer
anywhere in the world can apply for public benefits. Some of those
programs have a lot of protections in place. As we found in the pan-
demic through our work, many did not. So, it really takes a big
data approach, using all the tools available to find the hidden con-
nections that you cannot find manually.
We are working on—we have 142,000 known pandemic fraud
cases, and they have a fingerprint, and we have been able to figure
out that fingerprint. And our hope is to be able to continue our
work to help people proactively defend against these things and
prevent them early, because you cannot fight today’s fraud issues
with yesterday’s tools.
24
Mr. JACK. Wonderful.
Ms. Wagner?
Ms. WAGNER. So, Medicaid and SNAP are a little bit different
than some of the other programs that are more recent or were real-
ly ramped up during the pandemic. They have a long history of
working to reduce improper payments.
They were challenged during the pandemic by some new pro-
grams, by increased demand, and by reduced staffing. So, now we
really need to kind of look at the other side of that and stabilize
the workforce, improve the IT systems to continue reducing those
rates.
Mr. JACK. Well, I would like to thank all three of the witnesses
for appearing before us today. I want to thank the Chairman for
calling this hearing.
And with that, I yield my remainder of 30 seconds to the Chair-
man. Thank you.
Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the distinguished gentleman and wel-
come him not just to the Subcommittee, but really to Congress,
with an eye toward, as a new Member—as well some other people,
including Mr. Frost, Mr. Moskowitz—making sure that their words
that they say back home are met with the reality of other senior
Members working with you to achieve those things.
And I think that that is the sense that I get, that it is a 100 per-
cent buy-in that we have about the problem. Mr. Mfume and I
want to come to a 100 percent working toward that answer. And
I want to thank the distinguished gentleman.
Mr. JACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SESSIONS. The distinguished gentleman from Florida is rec-
ognized, and good to see you, Mr. Frost.
Mr. FROST. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hello. Thank you so much for being here today. You know, when
I was back home in the district over the weekend, everywhere I
went—the grocery store, walking around the park, doing any-
thing—people were coming up to me asking about Social Security.
And I think a lot of people are worried and scared right now. I
think part of it has to do with a lot of the mis-and disinformation
that is going around. I mean, we have heard this constant lie from
Elon Musk that tens of millions of dead people are getting Social
Security paychecks.
Claiming fraud on Social Security, I think, is one way that folks
are going to justify cutting it, pocketing the benefits for billionaires,
privatizing it.
Ms. Kociolek, Elon Musk is now calling Social Security a Ponzi
scheme. How concerned are you that Social Security is a Ponzi
scheme?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. I do not think we have seen indications in our
work that that is the case.
Mr. FROST. Musk is calling it a Ponzi scheme as an excuse to de-
stroy it, in my opinion.
Americans earn Social Security through years of hard work, and
it is a good investment. It could be a better investment for Black
men because we are pretty much donors because we live less time.
But that is another conversation for another time.
25
It is one of the most popular government services, and most peo-
ple support more funding for Social Security, not less.
Ms. Wagner, you know, people want shorter wait times, pay-
ments processed more quickly, but at the same time, the Adminis-
tration wants to cut 7,000 employees from the Administration.
Yesterday somebody from my office called Social Security. Thirty
days to process something on retirement, 30 days on Medicaid, 230
days as it relates to disability.
What would be the effects of these cuts to the Social Security Ad-
ministration right now?
Ms. WAGNER. When staff shrinks, there are fewer people to take
appointments, to answer phones, to process applications for dif-
ferent benefits, and that hurts people nationwide. And in addition
to their own staff, Social Security Administration funds state Dis-
ability Determination Service employees who decide whether appli-
cants’ disabilities are severe enough to qualify for benefits. Their
processing time was already at a record high of 7 months, and we
expect cuts will have further impact. In addition, 7 in 10 of Social
Security staff do serve the public directly, so this will have a major
impact on customer service.
Mr. FROST. Thank you.
And it is not just, you know, billionaires like Elon Musk who are
going around attacking it. My own Florida senator, Rick Scott, the
richest person in Congress, which on the topic of fraud, you know,
my senator made history. He is the man responsible for the largest
Medicare fraud in the history of this country—$1.7 billion.
He says that Republicans are, quote, ‘‘going to have to cut Social
Security’’, end quote.
Why are they doing this? Well, to take money from Social Secu-
rity to use it for tax cuts for people who are too rich to need it.
House Republicans plan to make $880 billion in cuts to
healthcare. This means cuts to Medicaid and Medicare too.
Ms. Wagner, 4 in 8 American children are Medicaid recipients,
including over 60,000 people in my district alone. For an Orlando
family currently receiving Medicaid, what could be the financial
fallout from losing access to Medicaid?
Ms. WAGNER. Well, first, when states are forced to cut back on
funding, they are going to cut back on who is eligible and the bene-
fits they receive. But cuts will have broader impacts than just
those who are no longer eligible. They will directly or indirectly af-
fect the amount of funds available for state staff, for IT systems
that support Medicaid, and they will probably lead to more im-
proper payments and reduce program integrity.
And it will impact people even whose eligibility is not cut—longer
call center wait times, more errors, uncertainty, stress, and pos-
sibly not being able to get approved for benefits, or losing coverage
at renewal even though they remain eligible.
Mr. FROST. Thank you.
You know, before coming to Congress, I worked in organizations,
and one of the proudest things I did was work at March For Our
Lives. It came after the shooting that happened in Parkland.
I traveled this country, speaking with people that disagreed with
me on the issue of gun violence, but it made me a better person.
And something I learned during my travels is, in order to speak
26
about something in a bipartisan way, I think it is really important
to make sure people are coming at this on the right foot, in good
faith.
And I am all for the modernization of our government. I think
it is really important, and I say that as the youngest person in the
U.S. Congress. I think it is very important.
But when I see the people leading the effort, like Elon Musk, call
something like Social Security a Ponzi scheme, and I hear crickets
on the other side of the aisle, I have a really hard time taking any
of this seriously when I go home and I have people coming up to
me in the grocery store, who are living paycheck to paycheck, ask-
ing me, what are you going to do to protect Social Security?
So, thank you so much, and I yield back.
Mr. SESSIONS. The gentleman yields back his time.
The distinguished gentleman from Florida, Mr. Moskowitz, who
has asked to be waived on this Committee—sir, we are delighted
that you are here—the gentleman is recognized.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
granting my waiver. I appreciate it.
You know, I have been committed to helping the government be-
come more efficient, save dollars, go after fraud, waste, and abuse.
I was the first Democrat to join the DOGE Caucus, which, by the
way, has not done anything and has not been included in anything
Elon Musk has done. But, you know, it is nice that we have a cau-
cus.
And so, this is a bipartisan effort, like the Chairman mentioned.
We do want to get at waste, fraud, and abuse, but I do think dis-
pelling myths, dispelling fact from fiction, is important. And I want
to drill down real quickly first on what my colleague from Florida,
Mr. Frost, said, and I am going to be even more direct, because I
think it is important.
We will just go down the line. So, you gave an answer on wheth-
er Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The answer is no, right? It
is not a Ponzi scheme.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. We have not reported that it is a Ponzi scheme.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Right. So, it is not a Ponzi scheme?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. I am not aware that it is a Ponzi scheme.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK.
Ms. WAGNER. Agreed, not a Ponzi scheme.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK. So, Mr. Musk is wrong. No one is going to
get fired for saying it. All right. He is wrong. You can say it. It is
not a Ponzi scheme. I will say it for you. It is not a Ponzi scheme.
It is not a Ponzi—OK. He is wrong. I know we are afraid to say
it, and, see, that is part of the problem. We are afraid to say that
Elon Musk is wrong.
That is what Mr. Frost was talking about when he says he hears
crickets from my colleagues. We hear crickets from the witnesses
because everyone is afraid, when Elon says something, if it’ is pat-
ently false, we are afraid to say it is false.
All right. Let us talk about something else. The IGs getting fired.
You support the IGs getting fired? I mean, I got to imagine, if you
are interested in getting rid of fraud, waste, and abuse, they are
the people trying to get rid of fraud, waste, and abuse.
27
So, they got fired from Agriculture, Interior, HUD, Department
of Defense, the EPA, the State Department, HHS, Veterans Affairs,
Labor, Transportation.
You support that? In the mission of getting rid of fraud and
waste and abuse?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. The Inspector General community is critical.
There are—certainly an administration can——
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. No, I get that, but you have no opinion whether
that was good or bad? Again, we will not say Elon’s wrong. I know
you will not go there. But was that the right decision?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. You did lose institutional knowledge. Certainly,
the Administration has a right to change the Inspector Generals.
There are reporting mechanisms, though, that were not necessarily
followed.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. All right. Let me make it easier. So, like, let us
use numbers, let us use data. So, like, 51–49, 51 bad idea? Right,
that was a bad idea? I am trying to help.
Ms. KOCIOLEK. The proper protocols were not followed in——
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Right. Oh, well, we know it was illegal. Do not
get me wrong. I did not want to make you say that. I appreciate
you saying that on the record. It was illegal. The proper protocols
were not followed.
But is it good policy if you want to go offer fraud, waste, and
abuse? Was that good policy?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. To lose institutional knowledge——
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. No, not good policy.
Ms. KOCIOLEK [continuing]. Of the top officials?
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Good policy?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. I do not think it improves the ability to fight
fraud, waste, and abuse.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Not good policy?
Ms. WAGNER. Not good policy.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK. Right. And if you are telling the American
people that this is a focus of your administration, and then you go
fire all of the IGs, that does not seem to compute.
OK. Last, did fraud and improper payments start with Joe
Biden? In his Administration, was that the first time the govern-
ment has experienced that?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. That is not the first time——
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. No.
Ms. KOCIOLEK [continuing]. That fraud was reported.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. First time?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. No.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. First time?
Ms. WAGNER. No.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. So, we got to depoliticize this stuff because all
we are hearing is what happened in the last 4 years, in the last
4 years.
In 2017, $140 billion of improper payments. That sound accu-
rate?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. In 2024, we reported $162 billion in improper
payments.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. No, no, hold on. In 2017, $140 billion in im-
proper payments; in 2018, $150 billion of improper payments; in
28
2019, $174 billion of improper payments; and in 2020, $206 billion
of improper payments. Those are GAO numbers.
So, let me just do some math. In the first Trump Administration,
there were $670 billion of improper payments. I am not blaming
him, but he is blaming Joe Biden, and so is Elon Musk, blaming
for the improper payments for what happened in the 4 years of Joe
Biden.
And my point is, Mr. Chairman, if we do want to solve this on
a bipartisan basis, then we got to separate fact from fiction. We got
to depoliticize it.
$670 billion dollars of improper payments in fraud, waste, and
abuse in the first Trump Administration. Isn’t that correct?
Ms. KOCIOLEK. Correct.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Isn’t that correct?
Mr. DIEFFENBACH. I do not have any reason to doubt your math,
sir.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. OK. Isn’t that correct?
Ms. WAGNER. I believe so.
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Perfect.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SESSIONS. Does the gentleman seek to give back his time or
is the gentleman——
Mr. MOSKOWITZ. Mr. Chairman, I had no time back, but I am
happy to give you back the time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Would the gentleman—your Ranking Member has
asked if we would have a second round. The distinguished gen-
tleman is recognized, Mr. Mfume.
Mr. MFUME. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Moskowitz and just, I—to the gentleman
from Florida, I will say, Elon Musk is a lie, on the record, which
I have said many times, so I guess he is coming after me.
One of the things we want to do here is to allow everybody free-
dom of expression. This is an issue particularly for the Chairman
and I. We have been working this for a long, long time.
And getting to the root of this, by implementing what we are
hearing today and what we have learned from previous hearings,
is extremely, extremely important.
I do not want to be redundant, but, again, this whole notion
about, do we have an enforcement mechanism in place when agen-
cy heads just watch this sort of thing occur under their tenure and
do nothing about it, or watch it and feel like they cannot do any-
thing about it? And for those brave souls who do, how do we re-
ward them, and what do we do as a Congress to make sure that
we are tightening up their spine and that they are doing the right
thing?
I think it is fair to say that there will be legislation coming out
of this hearing at some point in time. I know the Chairman has
expressed an interest, and I hope to join him in that regard.
If we do not do anything else, once the shouting and everything
else is over with, we have got to find a way to make sure that dol-
lars that could be used to help people in this country actually get
to people. If we are able to slow down this—I cannot call it a trickle
of fraud, waste, and abuse—an avalanche that has been going on.
29
And I have been looking at the GAO numbers going all the way
back to 2003. So, Mr. Moskowitz was right, it did not start under
Joe Biden. This has been going on and on and on.
And I think we will have a gross failure on our part if we do not
find a way in this Committee, with this wind to our back, to do
something about it. It is going to take calm, clear thinking, a reso-
lute determination to make sure that whatever legislation we are
able to come up with jointly over and over again that passes, really
does get us to where we want to be.
I would think that everybody in this country is appalled to know
that there are crooks out here who feed on the government, who
lie, who cheat, who steal, who deliberately find a way to get around
the law. And I do not know that there is any safe haven for those
individuals wherever they are.
I do know that we have got to bring the hammer down on them,
which is why I am so dismayed that the Inspectors General are not
in place to do just that. They had started a process, and it was
yielding results.
So, I am going to yield back to our Chairman. My commitment
is to work through these issues, to work in a bipartisan way where
possible—and I hope that is very possible—and to keep saying
what we have been saying over and over again, which now is start-
ing to get some sort of audience just because I guess Elon Musk
has a bigger bullhorn than my microphone here. But we have been
at this, this is not new, and we have got to find a way to do it in
a way that is surgical, deliberate, verifiable, and allows for due
process.
With that, I am going to yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate the time.
Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you very much. And also, the gentleman
does—I do not know if that was your closing comments?
Mr. MFUME. Uh-huh.
Mr. SESSIONS. OK. Then I am going to yield myself my time, and
then I probably will put those together with my closing comments
and then we will get out.
I want to thank not only the witnesses who are here today but
so many others who are in the audience. I think today you saw
very classic events that happen almost every day on the Hill, and
that is people missed the opening statements. They missed some of
the nuggets of information that each of you gave.
But what resides in each of us is a desire when we hear the term
$800 billion, whether it is waste, fraud, or abuse, or unintended
payments, whatever you would want to put that term with, it is
frustrating. It is frustrating for us. It is frustrating for you.
I will tell you that I think what Mr. Mfume described was the
two of us when he said the answer needs to be. I think the answer
needs to be a bipartisan answer. I think it needs to be looking at
this together. I think it needs to be this Subcommittee, through his
leadership and, perhaps, hopefully through mine, that we can guide
us to decision-making, that his strong voice, my voice, can move us
where we need to go.
Where is it that we need to go? I think today that we heard
about the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, is one of
those answers. It is an answer that currently exists, and it was a
30
bipartisan answer. It still maintains a good bit of data, but it was
done just for the pandemic. It was not done for other programs that
would reside across the government.
I think that the expertise that Mr. Dieffenbach spoke to me
about yesterday when I met with him for a good period of time was
that he sees that they could be a potential front-side answer to not
just waste, fraud, and abuse, but on an individual basis for the var-
ious organizations: Social Security, Veterans Affairs, IRS.
We spoke about how 18F for some time provided some assurance
that they would know who a person was on coming in, but we now
recognize it did not quite work that way.
But the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee has effec-
tively been able to prove that the work that they have done.
And so, a piece of legislation—and I spoke to Chairman Comer
about it this morning—will be in order within 2 weeks. We are
going to go to a markup. We are going to work together. We are
going to, I think, see the same answer, and that is, we think that
you worked, Mr. Dieffenbach, we think that that answer is an up-
front answer, and we will then have to find a way to mirror not
only what you do but find a way to bring the avenues of data and
information up front, and apply those same principles to the big-
gest problem.
I do not think that we will go overnight directly to you. I do not
think there is staff for that. I do not—we will work together. But
I do think that the answer lies in up front gaining the information.
If the Members had all been here up front, they would have
heard all three of you concur on that. They would have said, well,
we need to do this on an upfront basis as a person goes through
this process, in particular, before we send out billions or trillions
of dollars to people, which is something that I have tried to echo.
Our government is not prepared to send money out on a mass
basis at this point. We are not prepared. And I am not trying to
disappoint anybody in this Administration, but we are not prepared
for it.
We need to get prepared. And I believe that Mr. Mfume and I,
who have been given this authority and/or responsibility, will con-
tinue to work with you.
I will be quite honest, I was delighted with what I heard yester-
day from GAO. I think that they have provided us a lot of informa-
tion which is allowing us to hone in, not only on the problems, but
the answers.
And I think if we move ourself to answers through a process that
people understand and expect, it will mean that a lot of people gain
confidence in not only the Federal Government but the workforces
that are there.
Last, I do not want to do this necessarily because the gentlemen
are not here—Mr. Frost, Mr. Moskowitz—but I think it might be
slightly a revision to what he said about they are hearing crickets.
In fact, the $800 billion is a 10-year number. These will be votes
that will be taken, and we have already seen where these numbers,
which are being looked at by this DOGE organization, OMB, and
the government, is reporting that they believe the huge numbers
of, quote, ‘‘cuts,’’ could be achieved by reducing the amount of unin-
tended payments.
31
And we could look back—I did not do that—to line up whether
it is Medicare, whether it is Medicaid, whether it is VA, whether
it is SBA. I did not look at that from the information that GAO has
given us.
What I will tell you is, is that people like me, and I think people
like Mr. Mfume, want to do something about it. People like me—
I am a Republican—believe that we can get credit for cutting
waste, fraud, and abuse. And we have laid down the gauntlet to
say, we are going to do the things that would be necessary to cut
unintended payments. And we are going to work those into the gov-
ernment, and we are going to make sure this happens. And that
will be done on a bipartisan basis.
But for us to assume that we would make it better by growing
the organization, I would submit to you, I do not agree with that.
I do not agree that we can do it by keeping workers at home rather
than in the office, working with data bases and figuring out who
wants to get committed.
And this is where I saw the process that is political, where the
President said, if you choose not to want to come back, he under-
stood that. He would offer a buyout plan. It was immediately at-
tacked.
We live in a political world, and there are people who will attack
President Biden or President Trump, just from their word go—the
word go of their name.
So, I would submit to you that I think that we are not having
crickets. We are having a plan that we are laying out. I have got
to do a better job as one of the co-chairmen of DOGE. It is my op-
portunity and my real need to talk to the American people with
clarity.
But as the father of a Down syndrome young man who is 31
years old, I, too, have been through and seen how our services that
we offer to those people who cannot take care of themself and their
families should not be the ones that find themself on the wrong end
of these changes.
It is true what was stated here today that families that have dis-
abled people, disabled children, disabled adults, people they care
for, have a higher threshold of frustration of working through the
system. And I think that system will get better as we hone ourself
through the work that would be done on a bipartisan basis unless
fear—the fear that people have about losing Social Security—is, in
fact, not true. It would not be true.
It is not the goal of Elon Musk or of this government—and I do
recognize there have been some words stated about their problems
with what they see as an aggregate amount of unintended pay-
ments. But I will tell you that there is more than enough room to
stop the unintended payments that would equal the amount of
money that is almost destined to be cut.
We deal with 10-year numbers, not 1-year numbers. We deal
with numbers that are exponentially high, and it sounds almost
like, oh, my gosh, they are going to shut down the program.
In fact, there needs to be thought process behind it. I, in no way,
am afraid of a town hall meeting, of explaining what we are doing,
but as a Member of Congress, if we accept that where we are and
32
where we have been, is acceptable to our future, we are missing
the boat.
So, I would ask that each of you know that you got asked tough
questions today—does not bother me—but to have the confidence
that if we move forward together, including Mr. Mfume and myself,
that we can end up in a point where we look at each other and say,
we made this better. We saved the money that was actually des-
tined for people that it was intended to. And then we will see what
the score is.
I have great confidence we can do this.
So, I do not want conversation that they hear crickets to be part
of this. There are not crickets. There is a really daunting task of
us to take this $1.7 trillion or $2.7 trillion, whatever the amount
was, that is laid in front of us.
And we were never talking about cuts that were bigger than
that. We were talking about cuts that are way less but that make
sense.
So, I want to thank each of you for being here today. I think each
of you did well enough to be invited back, but perhaps more impor-
tantly, we would like to work with you.
And Mr. Mfume and I are going to deal with this, and legislation,
we will pass it to you and also see what your opinion might be for
that.
But I want to thank you each for being here today.
The gentleman—does the gentleman wish further time?
Mr. MFUME. Just to thank our witnesses. Thank you.
Mr. SESSIONS. We do thank our witnesses. And if they stick
around a second, Mr. Mfume and I are going to end this hearing
and come and thank you for being here.
This concludes the hearing today. I want to thank the witnesses,
and you are now excused.
I have to get my script right. Whoops, we will—where is the 5-
day?
Well, hold on just a second. I am sorry.
We will, without objection, we will extend to—where is the state-
ment that you want me to read? The 5 days? It is all—5 legislative
days for people to ask for questions and to receive information.
Where is that, Bill?
Counsel. Where is it?
Mr. SESSIONS. I do not see it, and I apologize. It is a normal
thing we do. All right. Yes, I know what it says, but I am going
to read—oh, there it is.
With all that said, without objection, all Members will have 5
legislative days within which to submit additional written ques-
tions for witnesses which will be forwarded to witnesses for their
response.
If there is no further business, without objection, the Sub-
committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:48 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Æ
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