Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators praise the House-passed Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act of 2026 (FPAA) for establishing “fraud prevention and program integrity functions and data-sharing authorities within Treasury and a permanent, government-wide Inspector General for Fraud, Accountability, and Recovery.”

When lawmakers went home for the August recess, however, no one in the Senate had introduced a companion version of the House-approved measure for the upper chamber’s consideration despite the fact that the GAO, since 2022, has encouraged Congress to do what the FPAA enables.

The FPAA clears the way for two actions critical to the success of the battle against waste, fraud, and corruption in trillions of dollars’ worth of federal benefits and contracting expenditures: First, FPAA directs the Treasury Department to combine existing multiple anti-fraud processes from across the government. A key aspect of the Treasury action would include computer database matching of all such spending against the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Death Master File to stop sending benefit checks to deceased individuals.

Second, the FPAA establishes the new IG within Treasury and assigns it government-wide responsibilities previously fulfilled by the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) that monitored waste and fraud in the more than $5 trillion in federal spending authorized by then-President Joe Biden and Congress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than one million Americans in 2020 and 2021.

For example, PRAC said it dug into reams of “data of applicants who received benefits from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and also qualified for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA)” and found that in “over 40,000 cases, applicants represented significantly higher income to SBA than to HUD. These anomalies indicated potential fraud in more than $860 million in PPP loans.” The FPAA would transfer the remaining $88 million previously appropriated to PRAC to the new IG.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) was the main sponsor and advocate in the House for the FPAA, and immediately following the proposal’s passage in the lower chamber, he said, “I look forward to the Senate taking up this important piece of legislation and further strengthening Congress's control of taxpayer dollars.”

Sessions could not be reached for comment for this news story.

Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), who co-sponsored the bill with the Texas Republican, told The Washington Stand that “American taxpayers deserve to know that their hard-earned money is being protected from fraud, waste and abuse. The House has done its job by passing the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act, which will give federal watchdogs the tools they need to detect fraud, prevent improper payments and recover taxpayer dollars. Now it’s time for the Senate to act. When senators return in September, they should make this legislation a priority, send it to the president’s desk and keep our promise to the American people to protect every taxpayer dollar we can. There should be no partisan disagreement when it comes to stopping criminals from stealing from the American people.”

The lack of Senate action is puzzling, especially on an anti-waste and fraud bill that passed the House on June 10 on a 240-181 vote that included ayes from 29 Democrats. The measure was formally received by the Senate on June 11. The normal procedure on legislation passing the House and being referred to the Senate is for the bill to be read twice — a quickly dispatched formality — and then assigned to a committee, which in the case of anti-fraud proposals is typically the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (SHSGAC).

Other significant House-passed anti-waste and fraud measures referred to the Senate around the same time as FPAA were assigned to SHSGAC, including H.R. 8340, the Taxpayer Funds Oversight and Accountability Act. That measure “requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to submit a four-year governmentwide financial management plan to Congress within 12 months of enactment and thereafter with the budget submitted in the first full fiscal year following the start of a presidential term. Such plans must address certain topics, including strategies for (1) improving financial management systems; (2) strengthening the financial management workforce; and (3) reporting performance and cost information. OMB must annually submit related status reports to Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO),” according to Policy Engage.

Also passed by the House and referred to the Senate around the same time as FPAA was H.R. 8170, the Government Audit and Accountability of Federally Funded State-Administered Programs Act co-sponsored by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). This measure, Policy Engage explains, directs GAO to identify program areas and administrative practices that make such programs systematically vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse; assess best practices that strengthen the administration of federally funded programs and prevent such vulnerabilities; identify federal tools, resources, and assistance to address vulnerability patterns; and include recommendations for addressing high-risk program areas and administrative practices.”

One question that does not explain the Senate’s inaction on the FPAA is the cost of implementing the various actions the measure mandates. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), implementation of the FPAA would cost a mere $18 million from 2026 to 2036.