Taxpayer Resources Used in Emergencies Accountability Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

Mr. Speaker, over the past few months, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has taken the lead on investigating a staggering amount of fraud. The common theme we have seen in this fraud has been bad actors taking advantage of emergency funds from the government. Agencies disburse money from these taxpayer-funded accounts to help those in need when an emergency, such as the COVID pandemic, cause major disruptions in the day-to-day lives of Americans.

Emergency relief funds are meant to help families stay afloat in a crisis. Instead, a lack of planning by and failures of oversight of Federal agencies have turned these emergency funds into a jackpot for fraudsters.

For example, a central point of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's oversight hearing dealt with his ties to the criminals in the Feeding Our Future scheme. That scheme involved more than $250 million in taxpayer money being stolen by the Feeding Our Future organization, which defrauded USDA's COVID programs.

What became glaringly evident in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic was that government agencies were not properly equipped to deal with emergency relief funds. Even those in government, such as Minnesota's Attorney General Ellison, have failed to investigate and even potentially aided fraudsters abusing these funds.

It was one of the largest COVID-era fraud schemes in the country, and it happened right under the nose of Minnesota's top law enforcement officer.

That is why we need to make sure emergency relief funds are protected from fraud. In total, the Government Accountability Office estimates that a staggering 19 different pandemic relief programs were defrauded from 2020 to 2024 to the tune of $300 billion. What is even more disturbing is that was just the fraud in COVID-related programs.

In addition to COVID-related fraud, the Government Accountability Office also estimates that the government may lose as much as $521 billion. That is not waste. That is not error. That is a heist of historic proportions.

These numbers are practically unfathomable. Yet, here they are staring at us as a reality. We, quite literally, cannot afford as a country to be losing that amount of money per year to fraudsters. Our national dealt is nearing $39 trillion.

That is why I joined my Democratic colleague (Mr. Subramanyam), and we introduced the TRUE Accountability Act together. That passed out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform unanimously.

The TRUE Accountability Act is simple. It tells Federal agencies to plan ahead, protect taxpayer dollars, and stop treating fraud as an afterthought or a cost just built into the system as a feature, because it is time to bring some accountability to our government so that we stop losing untold amounts of hard-earned taxpayer money.

This act forces government agencies to be better prepared for an emergency, requires them to make internal plans that incorporate data- driven frameworks such as the GAO's A Framework for Managing Improper Payments in Emergency Assistance Programs, and A Framework for Managing Fraud Risk in 20 Federal Programs.

These plans will include policies and procedures to assess risks of improper payments, fraud, and related mitigation strategies, as well as to identify a senior official responsible and accountable for implementing the plan.

These internal plans will go a long way in combating any potential fraud that might occur when emergency relief funds are disbursed.

We must not be caught off guard the next time an emergency hits. In an emergency, people's lives are already upended. They don't need to also be worrying about fraudsters looting the Federal Treasury. We need to be ready to act in an efficient manner that protects taxpayer dollars.

This is a commonsense, bipartisan effort that both sides of the aisle can easily agree on, and it must be passed to safeguard the hard-earned money of American taxpayers.

Fraudsters learned from the COVID-era. With this bill, next time we will be ready for them, not the other way around.

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