The Biden-Harris administration is set to surpass $1 trillion in inflation-adjusted improper payments, according to a new watchdog report.
That puts the administration on track to break the record for the highest amount of improper payments in a single presidential term, Open The Books found. Improper payments, which are “made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason,” are forms of wasteful government spending that include underpayments, overpayments, administrative errors, and in some cases, fraud.
“Leadership occasionally pays lip service to tamping down improper payments, but it’s obvious: the more we spend, the more mistakes get made,” a spokesman for Open The Books explained. “We need to have greater accountability for mitigating the losses and give Congress the tools to troubleshoot the problem.”
Open The Books’ analysis found that over $764 billion in improper payments — $800 billion when adjusted for inflation — has been expended by the Biden-Harris administration in the first three fiscal years. That means taxpayer funds have been wasted at a rate of $7,500 per second — $450,000 every minute.
The administration is now on track to surpass a whopping $1 trillion in improper payments before the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January, which would mark a new record.
Almost a quarter trillion dollars in improper payments, $235 billion, were recorded during the 2023 fiscal year alone. Various government programs and agencies are responsible for the payments, with Medicare and Medicaid collectively accounting for $101.5 billion on the erroneous spending last year. The figure accounts for 43 percent of last year’s improper payments.
COVID programs continue to burden the taxpayer, with $66.4 billion in improper payments stemming from the Department of Labor’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection program.
About $295 million in retirement payments from the Office of Personnel Management went to deceased people, while $171 million was paid to prisoners, Open The Books found.
The Internal Revenue Service gave out faulty tax credits in the amount of $25 billion, with $546 million going to families who claimed they have more children than they actually do. Meanwhile, about 29 percent of federal overpayments, or $51 billion, have been recovered from 2023 so far.
“We fund the Pentagon for a full year on less than what the Biden administration is on track to have misspent,” a spokesman for Open the Books told The Daily Wire. “How much lost taxpayer money would finally embarrass leadership into action?”
The situation could be worse than the numbers suggest. The Government Accountability Office says that the improper payments figures likely do not include the full impact of fraud.
“Improper payment estimates may not fully incorporate fraud that involves sophisticated fraud schemes, collusion, document falsification, or false statements,” the office concluded in a February 2024 report.
Improper payments have plagued the federal government for years, with Open The Books reporting a startling $2.9 trillion in improper payments made from 2004 to 2022 adjusted for inflation. Now, the government watchdog says the sum has surpassed $3 trillion.
A bipartisan proposal to curtail wasteful spending, the Improper Payments Transparency Act, would require federal agencies with over $100 million in spending to provide more thorough reporting on improper expenditures and track such payments over a three-year period to determine their trajectory.
