Sponsors
The bill strengthens detection, measurement, and transparency around improper payments and enforces fiscal discipline without new authorized spending—likely saving taxpayer dollars—but it imposes new compliance costs and implementation burdens (especially on smaller agencies and CFOs) and may force tradeoffs in agency priorities or require future appropriations to be fully effective.
Taxpayers: stronger detection, measurement, and reporting of improper payments reduces waste and can save federal funds.
Federal financial management transparency and accuracy increase because agencies must include CFO-certified improper-payment identification and progress and adopt statistically valid measurement and GAO/OMB fraud-risk practices.
No new authorized federal spending: implementation must use existing budgets or authorities, which encourages fiscal discipline and limits immediate budgetary outlays.
Agencies (and ultimately taxpayers) face increased administrative and compliance costs to perform reviews, statistical measurements, CFO certifications, and expanded reporting.
Smaller agencies and new programs are disproportionately burdened (e.g., by the $100M threshold and early monitoring), which can divert staff and resources away from core program delivery.
Because the Act provides no new authorization for spending, agencies may be unable to fully implement required measures if existing funds are insufficient, delaying or limiting intended benefits.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens improper-payment identification and estimation for large new federal programs, adds a CFO certification and 10 years of fraud-control reporting, and prohibits new appropriations to implement the law.
Introduced January 13, 2025 by James Lankford · Last progress January 13, 2025
Requires federal agencies to strengthen how they identify, estimate, and report improper payments for large new programs, adds a formal definition of agency chief financial officer (CFO) for these rules, and directs agencies to report for 10 years on progress implementing fraud-risk controls and leading practices. It also says no new money may be appropriated to carry out these changes, so agencies must use existing funds and authorities to comply. The bill changes improper-payment rules to require agencies to flag newly created programs that are likely to spend more than $100 million early in their life, produce statistically valid improper-payment estimates approved by OMB and the agency CFO, include those reports with agency financial statements, and include a CFO certification about the identification process and monitoring actions. For a decade agencies must also report to Congress on implementation of specified internal controls, fraud-risk assessments across key payment types, and progress adopting GAO and OMB leading practices.