Sponsor
Gary James Palmer
Representative · R-AL
Representative · R-AL
The bill strengthens standardized oversight, transparency, and program-integrity practices to reduce improper payments, but does so at the cost of added administrative work, fiscal burden, and potential privacy and timing challenges for agencies, states, and taxpayers.
Taxpayers will get clearer, standardized, and statistically valid estimates of improper payments and improved public reporting, increasing visibility into government waste.
Federal agencies and program overseers will receive updated, standardized Treasury/OMB/CIGIE guidance and required risk assessments, improving detection and prevention of improper payments before funds are disbursed.
Programs (and those who run or rely on them) will face stronger program-integrity requirements—publicly prioritized risks, controls, and corrective-action timelines—supporting better fraud detection and accountability.
Federal agencies (and their staff) will face increased compliance, reporting, and methodology-change burdens that raise administrative costs — costs that are likely to be borne in part by taxpayers and contractors.
State, local, and private data holders will face expanded data-access and coordination expectations that may create privacy, data-sharing, and implementation challenges.
Changing the frequency of some reporting (e.g., from annual to every three years) could delay visibility into emerging improper-payment problems for taxpayers and oversight bodies despite deeper periodic analysis.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Refocuses improper payment reporting to payments that cause defined financial loss, requires agencies to include estimates in budget justifications, and updates OMB/CIGIE/IG guidance and deadlines.
Official title: To reform the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 to ensure executive agencies focus on fraud prevention, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 23, 2026 by Gary James Palmer · Last progress June 11, 2026
Changes federal improper payment reporting and oversight to focus on improper payments that cause actual financial loss to the government, defines “financial loss to the Government,” and requires agencies to include those estimates and supporting materials in annual budget justifications. It also requires Treasury to issue risk‑assessment guidance within one year, requires agencies to perform risk assessments within six months after that guidance (and before disbursement for new programs), updates reporting frequencies and contents, and revises timing/mandatory language for OMB and CIGIE guidance and Inspectors General reporting duties.