Fraud-fighting oversight committee gets a life extension in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’

A provision to extend the life of the government’s fraud-fighting oversight body, set up to track pandemic spending, snuck into law as part of Republicans’ recently passed reconciliation bill. 

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, or PRAC, was staring down a scheduled sunset date at the end of September, but it now has $88 million in appropriations and a new sunset date in 2034.

Congress set up the body in early 2020 as it doled out trillions of dollars in pandemic relief spending. 

Since then, the committee, which includes 10 inspectors general, has been overseeing spending across programs, coordinating between watchdogs, setting up a data analytics center and investigating fraud.

Congress’ decision to push the sunset date of the PRAC back gives the committee the opportunity to try to leverage its data analytics capabilities to prevent money from going out the door to fraudsters in the first place.

It’s something it didn’t have the chance to do during the pandemic, since agencies were quickly distributing funds as the PRAC was just getting started, Ken Dieffenbach, the PRAC’s executive director, told Nextgov/FCW. 

The watchdog community didn’t have that analytics center set up already at least partially because, in 2015, lawmakers let a similar center set up to oversee 2009 stimulus spending dissolve.

“We have a cool opportunity now to use the lessons learned, the tools, the data we have to identify anomalies before money goes out the door and say, ‘Hey you may not want to pay this person,” he said.

“Had that [analytics center] been in place five years ago, think about all the [paycheck protection program and COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan] and unemployment stuff we could have flagged earlier,” said Dieffenbach. “So we're hoping to build a model that proves that, and for the next disaster, be able to do just that.”

The life extension comes during a rocky moment for the federal government’s watchdog community. 

Days into his new administration, President Donald Trump fired around 17 inspectors general across federal agencies, a move that ran against the norm that watchdogs are nonpartisan actors who serve across administrations. 

Those fired included the top watchdogs at some of the agencies that are part of the PRAC: the Departments of Labor, Treasury, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services.

Since then, some of those ousted by Trump have filed a lawsuit arguing that their removals were illegal, as Trump didn’t give Congress a required 30-day warning of their ousters.

“It’s been disruptive,” acknowledged Dieffenbach, “but we’ve been able to continue doing our work.”

Michael Horowitz, who has been the chair of the committee since April of 2020, was also recently moved to the acting chair position when he stepped down from his post at the Justice Department and became the inspector general at the Federal Reserve last month.

The chair of the PRAC is chosen by the chair of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent executive branch entity of which the PRAC is technically a part. It’s unclear what the plans are for finding a new permanent chair or not, said Dieffenbach, who said that moving to fraud prevention instead of recovering funds after they are in the hands of fraudsters is a top priority for the PRAC. 

A big part of that effort will involve the data. The committee’s analytics platform includes over 50 datasets with access to more than 1.6 billion records from public, non-public and commercial data sources, the result of over 130 data sharing agreements across the federal government.

“That’s my biggest challenge going forward, is figuring out what other datasets can we get and how do we get them?” he said. “How do we get the political capital to obtain them, and then what do we do with them?”

Getting those agreements in place is arduous, said Dieffenbach, despite the fact that they offer an extremely valuable look across agencies that individual watchdogs at those agencies don’t necessarily have themselves. That matters because fraudsters often target more than one program and place in the government.

“Being able to provide that service and that capability … to as many of them as we have jurisdiction to assist is an incredibly important next step in oversight,” said Dieffenbach.

The oversight committee also supports law enforcement agencies. In March, for example, two men pleaded guilty to defrauding the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program of about $109 million. The PRAC’s analytics tool helped with the investigation.

Now, the PRAC will be figuring out what to add to its portfolio, said Dieffenbach, as the reconciliation bill gives it remit over programs within that law in addition to pandemic-era programs. 

The law, a centerpiece of Trump’s agenda, extended tax cuts from 2017 and put money toward priorities like immigration enforcement. It also made changes to some benefits programs, including putting new work restrictions onto Medicaid.