DOGE Caucus Introduces Bill Aimed At $162 Billion In ‘Improper Payments’

Members of the House and Senate DOGE Caucuses on Thursday introduced a bill that would require all government agencies to use the kind of database checks espoused by Elon Musk — such as checking a Social Security number against a list of dead people — before issuing payments.

The bill could eliminate much of the $162 billion that the Government Accountability Office estimates the federal government pays improperly each year, they said — an amount equal to all savings DOGE says it has achieved by cutting contracts, grants, and leases.

It also represents an effort to codify President Donald Trump’s executive orders, as some conservatives grumble that Congress has not done enough to slash spending.

The “Delivering On Government Efficiency (DOGE) in Spending Act” is likely to pass with widespread support, as it essentially requires transparency and modern good-governance practices. If Democrats oppose it, they would essentially be opposing an effort to stop fraudulent payments.

The bill puts into law one of Musk’s findings, also captured in a Trump executive order: that the Treasury Department, which cuts the checks that other agencies authorize, is well situated to verify whether proposed payments are proper, and stop payment if information from one agency contradicts information from another.

“Prior to DOGE, Treasury did not put even the most essential information into its computer disbursement systems, which led to hundreds of billions of dollars of spending with no ability to account for basic things like why the payments were made,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said in a statement. “The Treasury Department was also not empowered to double-check agencies’ work, leading to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of fraud and improper payments.”

Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus, introduced the bill alongside Rep. Aaron Bean (R-FL), who chairs the House DOGE Caucus. The bill has 13 Senate co-sponsors.

The bill comes the same week that the government’s COVID watchdog released a report titled “Pre-Award Vetting Using Data Analytics Could Have Prevented Over $79 Billion in Potentially Fraudulent Pandemic Relief Payments.” That number is entirely based on people using Social Security numbers that were either nonexistent or tied to the wrong names to collect Paycheck Protection Program loans, but which were paid out anyway.

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It “gives Treasury the ability to check relevant databases throughout the government for purposes of confirming eligibility to prevent fraudulent and improper payments. This will break the existing stovepiping that enables fraudsters to defraud multiple programs with the same information because government databases do not talk to one another,” Ernst said.

Agencies would be required to give Treasury’s “Do Not Pay” system access to relevant data before Treasury could approve their payments, allowing Treasury to automatically check across government agencies for information indicating a payment is improper. For example, Ernst previously exposed how thousands were receiving unemployment checks without the government realizing that they were employed…by the government.

Do Not Pay does not currently have access to people’s Social Security numbers, which would serve as an obvious source of truth to verify people’s ages and identities, even though the agency provides a similar tool to private banks.

Treasury would use the National Directory of New Hires to flag whether someone was still unemployed before approving welfare or unemployment payments. It would access Fair Credit Reporting Act information, the data used by credit score agencies, to confirm residency and income.

It would also have access to certain IRS data, including gross income and total Schedule C income, bank account number, and whether a tax return was filed in a particular year. Ernst said tax data would not be provided to Treasury, but rather the computer system would be able to ask the IRS system to answer yes-or-no questions, such as whether a particular person’s income was above a certain amount.

The Government Accountability Office has long warned that some government programs have massive fraud, such as tax returns filed using others’ Social Security numbers to extract Earned Income Tax Credit welfare payments.

Inspectors general estimated in 2023 that fraud and improper payments in COVID bailouts totaled $400 billion. Coronavirus stimulus payments highlighted how the government has paid out billions of dollars without even attempting to verify claims using information that is in the hands of the government itself. For example, a USAID employee received a PPP loan for a fake business, even though state corporation records would have shown the LLC was nonexistent, IRS records would have shown it didn’t make money in previous years, and Office of Personnel Management data would have shown that the person was employed by the government, not a company.

The bill would also require basic information about the purpose of payments to be filled in, instead of left blank, and for the information to be published publicly on the USASpending website.