Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes.

Madam Speaker, fighting and preventing fraud should be a bipartisan issue, and preventing the misuse of government funds should be a priority shared by Democrats and Republicans alike.

When fraudsters successfully target government dollars, they steal from taxpayers, deprive our most vulnerable neighbors of lifesaving services, and undermine the public's trust in government.

We know that it is difficult to fight fraud and certainly difficult, if not impossible, to claw back payments after they have been delivered to a fraudster. There is no doubt the Federal Government must do more to address this problem.

That is why Oversight Committee Democrats have supported numerous antifraud measures, including the Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act, which seeks to add additional payment verification before checks are sent out the door.

Oversight Committee Democrats and our Democratic colleagues across the House will continue to fight waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government. However, the bill before us is flawed and does not constitute a good-faith effort to detect and prevent fraud.

H.R. 8464, the Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act, would give the Trump administration a blank check to cut off entitlements and grants to any entity or individual it disfavors with few guardrails. It would allow the Treasury Department to significantly delay funding if it decides there is sufficient reason that a payment carries an elevated risk of fraud.

This very broad, loosely defined authority could easily be used to target funding to State and local governments, university research grants, transportation funding, Pell grants, NIH grants, and even FEMA assistance.

Due to this administration's policies and this Congress' policies, Americans are struggling to put food on the table, gas in the tank, and to access the healthcare they need. For millions of families, Federal assistance, healthcare, food assistance, and Social Security is the only thing standing between them and financial ruin.

This bill threatens to pull that lifeline away by burying legitimate payments in vague criteria, red tape, and bureaucratic delays.

While we are all serious about stopping fraud, I hope, we can't turn a blind eye to the political interference and weaponization carried out by this administration.

Just last month, it suspended $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California, which will harm nearly a million elderly and disabled residents.

Last December, it threatened to withhold SNAP benefits from Colorado and Minnesota.

In January, the Department of Health and Human Services froze $10 billion in funding for essential needs across five States led by Democratic Governors. Meanwhile, not one State led by Republicans has been targeted.

The bill's stated intent is to stop improper payments, which we all agree is important. That is why House Democrats supported the Pre- Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act earlier this week, a bipartisan bill to ensure we check the Do Not Pay list and catch improper payments before they go out the door.

However, the bill we are considering here includes none of those safeguards and will endanger millions of Americans who rely on critical programs for healthcare, food, and rent.

The American people want programs that work, not unnecessary red tape, delayed payments, and more dysfunction.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Bell).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Madam Speaker, I want to address the gentleman from Kentucky who described my statement as gibberish. Perhaps to him the details of the programs and the legislation are gibberish, but it is not to me.

I wonder if the gentleman knows how often the Do Not Pay list produces a false positive--in other words, how often the Do Not Pay list says someone shouldn't get paid when actually they are perfectly legitimate.

Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I am reclaiming my time.

Madam Speaker, I will just give one agency, Social Security, an agency that has been under assault by this administration. It is estimated that 10,000 times a year, Social Security falsely declares somebody dead.

Imagine that. You wake up one morning, and your own government says you are dead. It happens oftentimes because States send bad information to the Social Security Administration.

Time after time after time, the IG has recommended that Social Security and this body make improvements in that process. They have requested additional funding, which this majority has denied, that would improve that process and prevent some of those false positives.

This bill would make a terrible situation for someone falsely declared by their government to be dead even worse, because if the government says you are dead, you don't get your Social Security checks.

This bill would make an already impossible process, where someone has to go call Social Security, get into an office, and try to get an appointment with an agency that has been decimated by DOGE--I know that my constituents tell me every day that they call Social Security offices and can't get anyone to answer the phone because folks have been fired and pushed out.

This bill would further delay at least 10,000 Americans falsely declared dead each year from getting their Social Security checks. That is just one of the problems.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I yield myself an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, the IRS, 52 percent of the time when they say a return is fraudulent, they get it wrong. There are a lot of false positives on the Do Not Pay list.

This bill does nothing to address that situation, to ensure the Do Not Pay list is actually getting the fraudsters, not the law-abiding Americans who deserve their Social Security checks. It would make it a lot harder for all of our constituents to get the money they deserve when the government makes a mistake.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. McGarvey).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WALKINSHAW. Madam Speaker, as I have said today, preventing fraud should be a priority for all of us, but this bill gives the Department of the Treasury far too much arbitrary authority to prevent critical Federal assistance from reaching Americans in need in a timely manner.

I will be happy to work with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support legislation like the eight suspension bills we considered earlier this week to combat fraud, but this bill misses the mark.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source