Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT.

Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the Office of Management and Budget recently reported that the Federal Government made $98 billion in improper and overpayments last year. This is a staggering amount and completely unacceptable. No family or business in America would tolerate being charged twice or overbilled for anything, and neither should our government.

We need to do everything we can to ensure that the government spends every tax dollar in the most responsible way possible. In fact, we have an obligation to the taxpayers to fight waste, fraud and abuse and to ensure that if the government overpays for something, it has the means to recover those precious tax dollars.

The bill we're now considering, S. 1508, the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010, will provide the government with the means to fulfill this obligation to the taxpayers.

Senate 1508 amends the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 to require the head of each Federal agency to review agency programs and activities every 3 fiscal years and identify those programs that may be susceptible to significant improper payments. If agency heads determine that significant overpayments have occurred, they must then recover them by following the procedures in the act.

The bill also requires the agencies which make significant improper payments to implement internal controls and other procedures to help eliminate any future improper payments.

The House passed a companion bill, H.R. 3393, the Improper Payments Elimination Act of 2009, introduced by Representative Patrick Murphy on April 28, 2010, by a voice vote. S. 1508 has small but important changes from the base text in H.R. 3393. S. 1508 strengthens the bill by requiring recovery audit contractors to report the fraud they find and to conduct appropriate training on the means and methods to do so. S. 1508 also requires the agencies to report to Congress and OMB their actions and plans to address the recommendations they receive from the audit recovery contractors.

S. 1508 provides the Federal Government with the tools needed to prevent mistakes and overpayments in the first place, and recover funds that are paid in error. It makes Federal agencies more accountable for properly managing taxpayer funds. The bill requires agencies to develop and report corrective action plans based on measured error rates, and creates incentives for meeting their goals and penalties for failure. Importantly, the bill also gives the agency the means to go after the funds they have overpaid, which will make the taxpayer, agencies, programs, and activities which relied on those appropriations whole.

We are living in a time when our government is living under extreme fiscal demands, and we need to do everything possible to ensure that every tax dollar goes to where it is needed. To ensure this takes place, we need to provide our Federal agencies with the tools to properly manage their spending. We also need to give the agencies the ability to follow through with their oversight and provide them with the ability to recover erroneous payments. However, we cannot stop there. We must do everything we can to ensure that Federal agencies that make improper payments fix the problems that allowed the improper payments in the first place.

I would like to thank Representatives Murphy, Bilbray, Towns, and Issa for working together in a truly bipartisan manner to get this important piece of legislation enacted into law. S. 1508 is a commonsense, good government bill, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT.

Source