Nikki Clowers, acting COO of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), previewed their annual report ahead of Trump’s February 24 State of the Union, detailing $63 billion in taxpayer savings—$16.6B from SBA fraud controls and $15.7B in Medicaid reforms—while citing a $1T+ interest burden on the national debt. GAO’s bipartisan-backed $811M budget delivers $68 in returns per $1 spent, yet DOD remains unaudited for seven years despite its massive spending. Clowers highlighted ongoing fixes like a 2026 Social Security overpayment crackdown, proving GAO’s critical role in exposing fiscal waste amid partisan gridlock. [Automatically generated summary]
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Nikki Clowers is back at our table this morning, acting chief operating officer for the Government Accountability Office here to talk about a report card that the government agency puts out.
How did this report card come about?
What's the aim?
Sure.
First, thanks for having me.
I'm really happy to be here.
This is our annual performance and accountability report.
It is a report card.
I'm glad you described it as that it shows how we did last year, what we delivered in terms of results.
Executive branch agencies are required under GIPRA to issue an annual performance plan or report.
GAO, we're an independent ledge branch agency, meaning we're located in the legislative branch and work for Congress.
So we're not required to put out this report.
But like other high-performing organizations, we have goals, we have measures, we track the measures, we want to understand our impact, and we believe in transparency and accountability.
So we put this report out each year.
It's in your name.
Absolutely.
So how do you determine what you're going to review?
Well, in terms of the work that we do, we do our work for Congress.
Congress drives everything that we undertake.
They make those ask in two forms.
Either ranking member or chairs of committees will send requests for GAO to study a particular issue to review a particular program, or they'll put a provision in law or a committee report that would direct us to do a review of a particular program.
And you can imagine the bigger the bill, sort of the more mandates, that's what we refer to, the ones that are in law, the more mandates that GAO will have.
Just to give you an example, the annual National Defense Authorization Act typically includes about 100 mandates for various GAO reviews.
So we tease this conversation by saying the GAO has streamlined federal agencies, saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
Give us the highlights.
Sure.
So we're often referred to as Congressional's Invest Congress's investigative arm because we do work for Congress and sometimes we are also referred to as the taxpayer's best friend because of the work that we do and sort of some of the numbers that you were mentioning.
Our mission is to examine how tax dollars are used and to make recommendations on improving government efficiency and effectiveness.
And we have different measures to see how we're doing on that front.
And one of the measures is that we track the amount of financial benefits that we achieve each year.
Last year it was $63 billion that we were able to document.
And what financial benefits are, they are cost savings or where the government has been able to avoid certain costs or enhance revenue based on recommendations that we've made.
And so again, last year we were able to document $63 billion in financial benefits.
To put that in perspective, that means for every dollar that Congress gave us, we return to the taxpayer $68.
So that's some of the highlights.
Another measure that we use is that we track the number of programmatic or operational benefits that we find with agencies or Congress implementing our recommendations.
These are things that maybe you can't put a dollar figure to, but they do improve government services and program delivery.
So here are some of the numbers from the report card.
$16.6 billion connected to fraud controls at Small Business Administration COVID disaster loan programs.
This has been in the news.
Our viewers talk about it.
We've talked about it with them and lawmakers about disaster loan fraud during the COVID era.
You also found $15.7 billion in Medicaid savings tied to budgeting, $5 billion from Energy Department from Accelerated Radioactive Waste Cleanup in South Carolina, and $4 billion from Defense Department actions connected to a classified acquisition program.
Are these the big numbers from this GAO report card?
Those are the larger numbers, but they're typical of the type of work that we do.
Our responsibilities span the entire government, so we do work in all those areas, from transportation to healthcare to defense.
So you mentioned, Greta, the Small Business Administration.
That was work that we started and issued in 2021 when we were looking at SBA's pandemic loan programs.
We found they didn't have sufficient controls to prevent fraud.
We made recommendations that they take certain actions.
They did, including putting in automated checks as well as cross-checking data.
And when we went back to them, we found when they implemented that, they were able to save or prevent $16 billion in fraudulent payments.
You said GAO is taxpayers' best friend.
So let's hear from the taxpayers this morning.
And want to know from you, is there somewhere, some program, law that you want GAO to investigate where the taxpayer dollars are going.
Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
And a line for federal workers as well, 202-748-8003.
All of you can use that last line, 8003, to text.
If you don't want to call, just include your first name, city, and state.
You also looked at, the GAO also looked at the one big, beautiful bill that was passed by Republicans, pushed by the president, and signed into law.
This is what you found.
Sets new limits on how states use taxes on health care providers to fund their share of Medicaid costs, directs the HHS to allow Social Security numbers for Medicaid and CHIP program enrollees, and provides dedicated funding to improve the U.S. stockpile of critical minerals.
Talk about the work that GAO did on the One Big Beautiful bill.
I think that's a great example of where Congress used our work.
We're in constant communication with the Congress about what we're finding and our recommendations.
And the bill contained a number of our recommendations, which you're mentioning.
I'll give you an example.
In the Medicaid program, which is the joint federal state program that provides health care to low-income and vulnerable populations.
It serves about 70 million people across the nation.
Medicaid, the CMS will allow Medicaid to states to implement pilots.
They call them demonstrations.
But basically, it's you can test new ways of providing those services as long as it doesn't cost the federal government more in testing those innovative approaches or different services that the states want to provide.
Our work has consistently shown that it does cost the federal government more.
An individual pilot may cost the government several million dollars more, tens of millions of dollars more, but collectively, when you look across all these pilots, it's tens of billions of dollars.
And so, we've made recommendations for CMS to take action on that.
And the bill did.
It requires that CMS now certify that all of the demonstrations are budget neutral.
What is the GAO's annual budget?
Our annual budget is $811 million this past year.
We've had flat funding for the past few years, as many agencies have.
But we had good bipartisan support for GAO's budget because of the return on investment that I mentioned earlier, and that we're able to document how we're improving government.
So, when Congress comes together or when one party is in control and they push big pieces of legislation or even smaller ones, how often are they consulting the GAO to tell them, advise them about how they write this legislation?
We're almost on a daily basis talking to members of Congress or their staff about our ongoing work, our recommendations.
Each year we'll receive between 500 and 700 requests for work from Congress.
That represents 90% of all standing committees.
So, it sort of shows you the breadth of the work and how we're serving many members and offices of Congress.
Again, we want to know from all of you this morning: are you interested in where your taxpayer dollars go?
Is there a certain program or department or law that you would suggest to GAO that they investigate?
We'll go to Rich, who's in Marion, Ohio, Republican.
You were up first in this conversation, Rich.
Go ahead.
Great.
Yeah, great conversations.
It seems like if we could break down when people donate money to the government, that it goes to different things like Alzheimer's or whatever.
The other thing that makes me curious is some people that have a lot of money are getting together and deciding what they're going to do with it.
But I wonder why they don't donate to the government.
Like different charities, if they're doing good things, you say, oh, that's good.
And then you find out doing bad things and say, I'm not going to donate them again.
So what would it take for the government to do the right thing?
Say, boy, they're using that money so efficiently.
I think out of all the places I could give money, I want to help the government with the big debt.
I'll hang up.
Let's see your suggestions.
Thanks, Rich.
Thanks for the question.
I'll mention a couple of things.
First, the government does publish information about where they're spending your taxpayer dollars.
You can find that in different sources, but one source would be at usaspending.gov.
And you can break it down by programs and see where the big dollars are going and different programs that you may be interested in.
Regarding donations to the government, of course, the government's funded by your taxpayer dollars.
And certain laws govern in terms of appropriation laws how governments can receive money and use money.
And so that would need to be looked at in terms of what would be allowable.
The Trump administration had fired 17 inspectors general.
How has that changed the ability of the GAO to review spending decisions?
It hasn't changed our ability to conduct this work.
We partner with the Inspector General community.
We always have, because we want to make sure that we're leveraging their work in our work and that we're not duplicating their work.
But we have different missions.
The inspector generals are assigned to a particular agency, so that's their scope of responsibility.
They're looking at all the agencies' programs and activities.
GAO has the pan-government responsibility where we're looking across government.
So we do rely on their work and we collaborate often, but we are able, we conduct our own independent analysis.
We'll go to Iowa.
Craig is watching there, an independent.
Your question or comment here?
It's comment.
Okay, Craig, go ahead.
Okay, I would like to learn more about how government employees and federal employees use their expense accounts.
Sometimes I think they abuse their accounts and it costs the taxpayers a lot of money.
The example that I'm kind of referring to would be Kash Patel when he would arrange a flight for he and his, I don't know if he's married girlfriend wife, and they would get a plane and there's hardly anybody on it, but they would use these services at taxpayers' expense, you know, which is kind of over the top where they could have used better choices.
How does the GAO kind of provide oversight for things like that, mainly expense accounts?
In a couple of different ways, I'll first note for individual use of accounts and those type of decisions, that often does fall to the agency's inspector generals, where they're looking at the spending decisions of a particular agency.
But sometimes we do get asked as well.
And we'll look at across government or maybe across the agency and document the controls that were in place and how decisions are made.
And again, we get our work from Congress, and so Congress will request that we'll undertake certain work.
So we've looked at issues such as travel costs by different officials across government.
Ronald, in Colorado, independent?
Yes.
Morning, Ronald.
Go ahead.
Yes.
I'd like to know why hasn't there been an audit, I think, for the last seven years on the Department of Defense.
There has to be waste there.
Over?
All right, Ronald.
Ronald, I appreciate the question.
It is important because the Department of Defense does have a very large budget.
And consistently, the Department is unable to get a clean audit opinion.
It does get audited in terms of the financial statements, but it's been unable to achieve a clean opinion.
We've made a number of recommendations to them in terms of what they need to do to achieve that.
And we'll keep monitoring it because one of our responsibilities as GAO is that we are the auditor of the consolidated financial statements for the United States government.
And so we look at the individual audits of agencies when we pull together that consolidated statement.
And so this is very important.
Until DOD gets a clean opinion, we can't render an overall opinion on the consolidated financial statements.
Government Debt Sustainability00:02:57
We'll go to Culpeper, Virginia.
Wilbert on our line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
I'd just like to ask the young lady, do you know how much money go back to the U.S. Treasury for people that pass away that collect Social Security every year?
That's something that the government never talk about.
And we as American people just like to know how much money go back to the U.S. Treasury due to people passing away that's on Social Security.
Okay.
Thank you.
I don't have a particular number in terms of what the caller is asking about, but I'll mention a related issue is that we've long reported on the problem of the government paying dead people, people that have passed away, and we continue to make payments to them.
And that occurs because of the silos within government.
Treasury makes the payments.
They don't have the data needed because the data is housed in the Social Security Administration.
That agency keeps death data.
And so we've long recommended that they share that data with the Treasury.
Congress took action on this in 2020, established a pilot program for three years requiring Social Security Administration to share that data with Treasury.
In the first year alone, there was over $100 million in savings in terms of by preventing payments going to deceased individuals.
Congress more recently acted on this and made it permanent in January of 2026 with the ending improper payments to deceased people.
And we believe that will save the taxpayers like you millions of dollars.
Let's end on some big numbers.
The Congressional Budget Office predicted the deficit to grow to $3.1 trillion in 2036.
Debt held by the public rises from 101% of GDP in 2026 to 120% in 2036.
What, in the GAO work, how do you tackle the debt and deficit in this country?
That is one of the most significant challenges facing our nation.
We issue an annual report where we look at the fiscal health of the government.
And our bottom-line conclusion is that we're on an unsustainable fiscal path, and difficult decisions need to be made.
In addition to the numbers that you mentioned, right now we're paying over a trillion dollars in interest on the debt.
That's unsustainable as we go forward.
So we make a number of recommendations both to Congress and agencies in terms of how to improve the fiscal health of the nation.
We've also made recommendations to Congress in terms of how to better manage our debt.
Vicki Clowers is the acting chief operating officer at the Government Accountability Office.
You can learn more if you go to GAO.gov.
Bipartisan Insights on Debt Management00:00:46
Thank you for the conversation this morning.
Thank you so much.
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