Bureaucrats Handed Out $186 Billion
of Your Money Wrong.
And that’s only what they admitted to.
- $185.8Bin improper payments across 15 agencies and 64 programs in FY 2025 — GAO-26-108694, Apr 27, 2026
- +$24Bincrease from FY 2024 — the single largest year-over-year jump in five years — GAO-26-108694
- $57BMedicare improper payments alone — the largest single program offender — CMS FY 2025 Fact Sheet
- ~$3Tcumulative improper payments since FY 2003 — running 22-year total — GAO historical data
- 12 of 24major agencies failed to comply with at least one Payment Integrity Information Act criterion in FY 2024 — Inspector General assessments, GAO-26-108694
The federal government made $185.8 billionin improper payments during fiscal year 2025, according to a report published April 27, 2026 by the Government Accountability Office. That is $24 billion more than the prior year — a 15 percent spike in a single twelve-month period. The payments came from 15 federal agencies across 64 separate programs. Medicare alone accounted for $57 billion of the total. Medicaid added $37 billion more.
The number does not represent the full damage. The GAO explicitly acknowledges that several programs it already knows to be susceptible to significant improper payments — including HHS’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — are not included in the $185.8 billion total because agencies failed to publish the required estimates at all. Eight agencies reported no improper payment estimate to the public in FY 2024. The real number is higher. By how much, the government cannot or will not say.
Since the federal government began tracking improper payments in fiscal year 2003, the running total has reached approximately $3 trillion. That is not a typo. Three trillion dollars — dispersed incorrectly, to wrong recipients, in wrong amounts, for services never rendered, or for beneficiaries who were dead. The waste has persisted across Republican and Democratic administrations, but the programs that drive the bulk of it — Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, EITC — are administered overwhelmingly through Democratic-led agencies and states that have resisted tightening eligibility verification for decades.
It is not just fraud. It is bureaucratic failure on a government-wide scale.
Under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), federal agencies are required to estimate and report payments that were made in the wrong amount, to the wrong recipient, for goods or services not received, or in duplication of another payment. The definition intentionally casts a wide net. An overpayment is an improper payment. A payment to a deceased beneficiary is an improper payment. A payment made without the required documentation on file is an improper payment. Fraud is a subset, not the whole.
Of the $185.8 billion total in FY 2025, approximately $153 billion (82 percent) were overpayments — money that went out the door in an amount larger than it should have been. Roughly $10 billion were underpayments. The remainder were unclassified errors. The Earned Income Tax Credit posted a 32.7 percent improper payment rate. The Refundable Premium Assistance Tax Credit (Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies) posted a 31.6 percent improper payment rate. Nearly one in three dollars going out of those programs is going out wrong.
Medicare (HHS): $57 billion improper payments — includes $28.8B in Medicare fee-for-service (6.55% rate) and additional Part C + Part D errors
Medicaid (HHS): $37.4 billion — 6.12% improper payment rate; 77% of FY 2025 Medicaid improper payments attributed to insufficient documentation alone
EITC (Treasury/IRS): $21 billion — 32.7% improper payment rate; the IRS has never brought this rate below 20%
SNAP (USDA): $10 billion — food stamps paid to ineligible recipients or in incorrect amounts
Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SBA): $10 billion — COVID-era pandemic relief program, still generating improper payment figures in 2025
Source: GAO-26-108694 (Apr 27, 2026) + CMS FY 2025 Improper Payments Fact Sheet
HHS runs the two biggest offenders. Its own Inspector General found it non-compliant with the law requiring it to track them.
The Department of Health and Human Services drives roughly 51 percent of all federal improper payments through Medicare and Medicaid alone. In a report covering FY 2024 compliance, the HHS Office of Inspector General found that the department did not fully comply with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 — the very statute designed to force agencies to measure and reduce the problem. Specifically, HHS failed to conduct required improper payment risk assessments for programs with annual outlays exceeding $10 million at least once every three years, and failed entirely to report an improper payment estimate for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a multi-billion dollar program whose omission means the $186 billion total is almost certainly an undercount.
The department was led during the period in question by Secretary Xavier Becerra (D), who served as HHS Secretary from March 2021 through January 2025. Becerra, the former California Attorney General, was confirmed to run the agency overseeing Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the ACA exchanges — the very programs that account for the majority of improper payments documented in the FY 2025 GAO report. Under his watch the Medicaid improper payment rate climbed from 5.09 percent to 6.12 percent.
“HHS did not conduct improper payment risk assessments for each program with annual outlays greater than $10 million at least once every three years.”
HHS Office of Inspector General — FY 2024 Compliance Report (2025)
The Medicaid improper payment rate figure of 6.12 percent is itself likely a significant undercount. A 2025 Paragon Institute analysis of the underlying CMS measurement methodology found that Medicaid’s true improper payment rate is likely double the officially reported figure due to the way CMS samples and projects from a rotating set of approximately 17 states per review cycle rather than auditing the full program in any given year. The $37.4 billion figure is what the government measured. What it did not measure is, by the government’s own admission, unknown.
The IRS has known about the Earned Income Tax Credit’s 32 percent error rate for more than a decade. It remains unchanged.
The Earned Income Tax Credit posted an improper payment rate of 32.7 percentin FY 2025 — meaning nearly one in three EITC dollars was paid improperly. The program distributed roughly $64 billion in total benefits; at least $21 billion of that was paid in the wrong amount or to recipients who did not qualify. The IRS has never succeeded in bringing the EITC improper payment rate below 20 percent in any year it has been measured.
The EITC is the largest refundable tax credit in the federal budget. It was substantially expanded by the Biden administration in the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which broadened eligibility, increased credit amounts, and extended the credit to childless adults. Congressional Democrats have consistently resisted tightening the program’s verification requirements on the grounds that added friction would deter eligible low-income filers from claiming the credit. The cost of that policy choice, per the IRS’s own annual improper payment estimate, is roughly $21 billion per year in wrong payments.
According to inspector general assessments cited in the GAO FY 2025 report, of the 24 agencies responsible for 99 percent of all federal improper payments:
12 agencies failed to comply with at least one PIIA requirement in FY 2024
5 agencies had inadequate risk assessments — meaning they may not even know which programs are leaking money
7 agencies published unreliable improper payment estimates — meaning the numbers reported to the public cannot be verified
4 agencies did not develop plans to reduce improper payments at all
8 agencies published no improper payment estimate whatsoever — their programs are excluded from the $186 billion figure entirely
Source: GAO-26-108694 (Apr 27, 2026), citing IG assessments of PIIA compliance
The GAO has flagged improper payments as a government-wide high risk since 2003. Nine of ten recommendations from 2022 remain open.
The cumulative improper payment total since FY 2003 — the first year agencies were required to report estimates — now stands at approximately $3 trillion. To put that in context: the entire FY 2025 federal discretionary budget was approximately $1.7 trillion. The government has mispaid more money over the last 22 years than it spent on everything from defense to education to infrastructure in two full fiscal years combined.
In March 2022, the GAO issued a report on program integrity with ten specific recommendations to Congress and executive agencies for reducing improper payments. As of April 2026, the GAO confirmed that nine of those ten recommendations remain open and unimplemented. The agencies tasked with fixing the problem have, in most cases, simply not acted.
“Improper payments have been a government-wide issue for more than 20 years, with estimates since FY 2003 at about $3 trillion.”
GAO-26-108694 — Payment Integrity Report, April 27, 2026
The White House issued OMB Memorandum M-25-32on August 20, 2025, directing agencies to expand their use of the Do Not Pay portal — a federal database that allows agencies to cross-check payment recipients against death records, ineligible business registrations, and other disqualifying data before money goes out. The memo represented the Trump administration’s first formal push to systematically reduce improper payments through pre-payment verification. Whether agencies will implement it at a scale sufficient to move the $186 billion number remains an open question.
The watchdogs sounded the alarm. Congress responded with legislation. The agencies that caused it said very little.
Following the GAO’s April 2026 release of the $186 billion figure, the House Oversight Committee moved quickly. At a committee markup session, members advanced sweeping legislation targeting fraud and improper payments in federal programs. The legislation included mandatory pre-payment verification requirements, expanded use of the Do Not Pay portal, and penalties for agencies that fail to submit required improper payment estimates on time. The bill passed committee on a bipartisan vote.
The reaction from advocacy and watchdog organizations was pointed. Citizens Against Government Waste highlighted the figure in its weekly waste tracker, noting that the $186 billion represents enough money to fund the entire Department of Veterans Affairs for roughly two years. The Federalist noted that 12 of 24 major agencies had not fully complied with the law requiring them to measure and report improper payments, framing the issue not as accidental bureaucratic error but as systematic non-compliance by agencies that simply do not face consequences for mispaying hundreds of billions of dollars.
The GAO just confirmed: $185.8 BILLION in improper federal payments in FY2025. That's a $24 billion spike in one year. Medicare: $57B. Medicaid: $37B. EITC: $21B wrong. 12 of 24 agencies didn't even comply with the law requiring them to track it. This is not an accident. It's a system that has never been forced to fix itself.
$186 billion in improper federal payments. $3 trillion since 2003. Nine of ten GAO reform recommendations still open and unimplemented. And HHS — which runs Medicare and Medicaid — didn't even comply with the law requiring it to measure the problem. The bureaucracy is its own best customer.
The Radical Left has been wasting YOUR money for decades. $186 BILLION in improper payments last year alone. $3 TRILLION stolen from American taxpayers since 2003. That's why we're DRAINING THE SWAMP and fixing this with DOGE. No more blank checks. No more waste. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
$186,000,000,000 in improper payments in FY2025. 15 agencies. 64 programs. 8 agencies didn't even publish an estimate. This is what we're fixing. Pre-payment verification. Do Not Pay expansion. Real accountability. The era of rubber-stamp government spending is over.
$186 billion in one year. That is the admitted figure. The GAO explicitly says it is an undercount because multiple major programs — including TANF, administered by HHS — were not reported at all.
The programs driving the bulk of the waste are Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and SNAP — all programs Democrats have consistently opposed tightening with stricter verification requirements. The argument has always been that added friction would harm eligible recipients. The cost of that argument, per the government’s own auditors, is now running at more than $180 billion per year.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (D) presided over the department during the period these figures accumulated. His department was found non-compliant with the law requiring it to measure and report the problem. The Medicaid error rate increased on his watch. He left office in January 2025. No federal funds were clawed back. No agency director was disciplined. The $3 trillion cumulative total simply grew by another $186 billion.
Last updated: May 8, 2026 · 10:00 AM ET
All statistics in this article are sourced directly from primary government documents (GAO, CMS, HHS OIG, OMB) or wire and institutional news reports that cite those primary documents. Every dollar figure traces to a named report with a document number. No dollar amounts, program names, or agency findings were inferred or estimated by this publication.
- U.S. GAO — Payment Integrity: Agencies' Estimated Improper Payments Increased to $186 Billion in Fiscal Year 2025 (GAO-26-108694, Apr 27, 2026)
- U.S. GAO — Press Release: GAO Reports Improper Payments Rose to an Estimated $186 Billion Across the Federal Government in Fiscal Year 2025
- GAO — Full PDF Report GAO-26-108694 (Agencies' Estimated Improper Payments Increased to $186 Billion in FY 2025)
- CMS — Fiscal Year 2025 Improper Payments Fact Sheet (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, APTC breakdown)
- HHS OIG — Department of Health and Human Services: Non-Compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019, FY 2024 (published 2025)
- GAO — Program Integrity: Agencies and Congress Can Take Actions to Better Manage Improper Payments and Fraud Risks (GAO-25-108172)
- White House OMB — M-25-32: Preventing Improper Payments and Protecting Privacy Through Do Not Pay (Aug 20, 2025)
- The Federalist — Bureaucrats Improperly Paid Out $186 Billion In Tax Money In 2025 (May 8, 2026)
- Fox Business — Medicare, Medicaid lead $186B in federal improper payments, GAO finds
- Washington Times — The federal government made at least $186 billion in improper payments in a single year (Apr 28, 2026)
- Nextgov/FCW — Agencies doled out $186B in improper payments last year, GAO says (Apr 2026)
- RealClearInvestigations — Waste of the Day: Improper Payments Totaled $186 Billion in 2025 (Feb 27, 2026)
- PRAC — Pandemic Response Accountability Committee: Semiannual Report to Congress, Oct 1, 2024 – Mar 31, 2025
- Citizens Against Government Waste — This Week in Waste: May 1, 2026
- House Oversight Committee — Markup Wrap Up: Oversight Committee Passes Sweeping Legislation to Stop Fraud in Federal Programs
- GAO — YouTube: GAO Testimony: Federal Improper Payments and Fraud Risks