Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1345, I call up the bill (H.R. 8312) to establish fraud prevention and program integrity functions and data sharing authorities within the Department of Treasury and a permanent governmentwide Inspector General for Fraud, Accountability, and Recovery, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act dramatically enhances how agencies prevent fraud, especially during any future national emergency. It also ensures the governmentwide data analytic resources established to investigate pandemic-era fraud are permanently preserved.

Experienced fraudsters understand that when the government responds to a crisis, agencies often let their guard down. Serious failures were exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for the newly established or rapidly expanded financial assistance and benefits programs.

Agencies did not build effective fraud protections into their programs nor implement them until the funds were already lost to fraud.

Although the true extent of the fraud through pandemic relief efforts will never be determined, GAO estimates that hundreds of billions of dollars were potentially lost to fraud.

The Federal Government also lacked a centralized resource for data and advanced analysis that could have quickly identified fraudulent activities.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, or PRAC, built a data analytics capability on the fly as pandemic relief funds were already being expended by agencies.

American taxpayers have been hurt by the lack of swift investigative action and delays in implementing fraud prevention processes.

H.R. 8312 was drafted based on years of diligent oversight work under the leadership of Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions from Texas, who is the sponsor of this bill.

His legislation ensures there is a permanent, governmentwide, antifraud analytics function to assist agency inspectors general with their fraud work.

It ensures a permanent Inspector General Office for Fraud, Accountability, and Recovery, utilizing the valuable proven resources built by the PRAC over recent years.

This eliminates the need to start from scratch in the inevitable event of a new national emergency.

The bill also includes provisions to ensure appropriate coordination with the governmentwide program integrity and improper payment tools maintained by the U.S. Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service, providing Treasury the authority to develop a governmentwide data analytic support platform for Federal agencies and State-administered, federally funded programs to voluntarily participate in.

This bill is the culmination of years of this committee's work to understand how agencies can improve their operations to protect hard- earned taxpayer money from fraudsters.

I encourage my colleagues to support H.R. 8312, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, you will not hear anything more rich in this body today than listening to a Democrat who did absolutely nothing about fraud for the last 4 years talk about why we should oppose a very good measure to prevent and oppose fraud.

Madam Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), the sponsor of this good legislation.

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Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas.

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Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert).

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Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, it is estimated that if the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee were established prior to the pandemic, as much as $79 billion in fraudulent payments could have been prevented on the front end.

The Nation cannot afford to lose such a valuable resource. That is why I call on each of my colleagues to support H.R. 8312 to ensure that these antifraud capabilities are permanently available to Federal agencies and in preparation for any future national emergency.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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