Sen. Carper, Rep. Murphy Praise House Passage of Their Legislation To Curb Waste, Fraud and Abuse in the Federal Government

WASHINGTON – Today, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) praised the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (H.R. 3393). The bill, sponsored by Rep. Murphy in the House and Sen. Carper in the Senate, requires federal agencies to recover the estimated $100 billion of taxpayer dollars lost annually due to improper payments. The legislation provides important tools to address government waste, including requiring agencies to produce audited, corrective action plans with targets to reduce overpayment errors, mandating all agencies that spend more than $1 million to perform recovery audits on all their programs and penalizing agencies that fail to comply with current improper accounting and recovery laws. 

Last year Sen. Carper introduced the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (S. 1508) along with Senators Lieberman, Collins, Coburn, McCain and McCaskill.  Last month, the President announced his support for Sen. Carper’s and Rep. Murphy’s legislation and issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to implement programs to recover lost taxpayer dollars by cracking down on waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs. Sen. Carper has held several hearings on the legislation and it is expected to come up for a vote in the senate before the end of the year.

"This is great news for our efforts to combat our nation’s growing deficit by curbing fraud and abuse throughout government agencies," said Sen. Carper.  "The Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act continues to gain momentum, with the announcement of President Obama’s support last month and the House of Representatives’ vote today to approve the legislation.   There’s a lot of concern about our growing federal deficit and a lot of talk about finding ways to root out waste, fraud and abuse from federal agencies, but this critical legislation actually does something by implementing proven strategies to identify and recover improper federal spending.   Just as important, by requiring federal agencies to identify and recover improper payments we’re also giving these agencies the knowledge to make systemic changes that would prevent this wasteful spending from happening in the first place.  That’s progress we can all support.  I thank Rep. Murphy for his hard work on this legislation and look forward to the bill coming to the Senate floor for full consideration.  The sooner we pass this legislation the more taxpayer money we can save."

"I am proud to pass this bill to ensure we cut down on wasteful government spending," said Rep. Patrick Murphy.