Congress can make real progress on preventing fraud in the lame duck

The fiscal year has closed, and the federal government’s annual budget deficit totaled $2 trillion in 2026. To put this otherwise incomprehensible sum into perspective: Washington spent roughly $15,000 per household more than it collected in revenue over the past 12 months.

The $2 trillion deficit isn’t the result of a national emergency or temporary circumstance. It’s the nation’s current fiscal program. Washington is expected to average $2.4 trillion in annual deficits over the next ten years. 

While only a lame duck session remains in the 119th Congress, the House of Representatives has already sent several bills to the Senate that could deliver substantial taxpayer savings by helping agencies prevent fraud in federal spending programs, a problem that the Government Accountability Office estimates costs the federal government between $233 billion and $521 billion annually.

The Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act, sponsored by Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), would enhance the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system by adding new data sources and helping agencies verify eligibility before payments are made. The bill passed the Committee by a vote of 35-1 and passed the House with the two-thirds vote required under suspension of the rules.

The cleverly-named Zeroing Out Monetary Benefits Improperly Expended Act (or ZOMBIE Act), sponsored by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), would update the federal law aimed to prevent improper payments by shifting the focus from backward-looking audits to real-time auditing and risk management. The bill would also require an annual convening — bringing state government officials to meet with the Treasury secretary and OMB director — to coordinate fraud prevention in state-administered programs. The bill passed the Committee 40-0 and the whole House by voice vote.

The Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act sponsored by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), would establish a permanent government-wide anti-fraud Inspector General for Fraud, Accountability, and Recovery within the Treasury Department. This would involve transferring the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee’s data analytics tools (including its promising AI-enabled Fraud Prevention Engine that can review thousands of applications per second) and capacities into a new inspector general and expand their mission. It would also strengthen the Treasury Department’s authorities to use Do Not Pay and other screening tools to vet payments in federal and state-administered spending programs. This bill passed the House by a vote of 240-181 with 28 Democrats supporting it.

Each of these bills is awaiting action in the Senate. With broad bipartisan support in the House, Senate leaders have an opportunity to hotline the bills when lawmakers return. Alternatively, a senator could bring the bills to the floor and seek their passage by unanimous consent. Which senator would be willing to publicly object to bipartisan reforms that simply strengthen the government’s tools for preventing billions of taxpayer dollars from being stolen by fraudsters?

To be sure, there’s much more Congress could do to increase government efficiency and prevent fraud. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has already laid out a broader agenda for improving government efficiency and preventing fraud, including a list of “nine ways Congress can combat fraud in the federal government.” By its own estimate, its recommendations to federal agencies and matters for congressional consideration could produce between $132 billion and $251 billion in financial benefits.

Nobody should pretend that anti-fraud legislation will solve a $2 trillion deficit. But the enormity of the fiscal problem is not an argument against pursuing achievable savings. Rather, it is an argument for taking every reasonable opportunity to do so.

Senate leaders should make passage of bipartisan anti-fraud reforms a priority when lawmakers return for the lame duck session.