Sponsors
Introduced January 13, 2025 by James Lankford · Last progress January 13, 2025
The bill strengthens oversight and measurement to reduce improper payments and fraud without adding immediate federal spending, but it shifts administrative burdens and potential costs onto agencies and taxpayers and may leave programs underfunded or implementation delayed because it authorizes no new appropriations.
Taxpayers and program beneficiaries: Requiring statistically valid improper-payment estimates for large new programs improves detection and measurement of improper payments, helping reduce waste and recover or prevent lost federal dollars.
Federal agencies and the public: New CFO certification and mandatory fraud-risk identification and reporting increase agency accountability and oversight, which should strengthen controls over payroll, grants, contracts, and benefit payments and reduce fraud.
Taxpayers: The Act does not authorize new appropriations, so it creates no immediate new federal spending obligations and therefore does not directly raise near-term federal outlays.
Federal agencies and program teams: New reporting, data-collection, and oversight requirements — combined with the need to reprogram funds — will increase administrative burdens, may delay implementation, and can divert staff time from other priorities.
Program beneficiaries and service delivery: Because the Act does not authorize new appropriations, programs required by the law may be underfunded or delayed and full implementation could depend on future appropriations, creating uncertainty about timing and scope of benefits or services.
Taxpayers: Implementing new measurement, enhanced oversight, and ten years of additional reporting will increase administrative costs that ultimately are borne by taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires federal agencies to identify certain new large programs as susceptible to significant improper payments, produce statistically valid improper-payment estimates for those programs, and include expanded fraud-risk and corrective-action reporting in their annual financial statements. Adds and defines a "chief financial officer" role for these certifications and requires a 10-year series of Congressional reports on progress implementing financial controls and GAO/OMB fraud-risk practices. Prohibits any new appropriations to carry out the Act or its amendments, so agencies must implement the requirements using existing funds or reprogrammed resources. The reporting requirements begin the first fiscal year after enactment and continue for ten fiscal years for the specific progress reports to Congress.