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| 1 Apr 2026 | |
| Written by J.B. Wogan | |
| Data For the People (Podcast) |
On the latest episode of Data for the People!, Brett Loper discusses policy options for using data tools to prevent improper payments in federal benefit programs. The options appear in a new report produced by the Data Foundation and our Fiscal Intelligence Initiative, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Loper is currently the Executive Vice President for Policy at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation after serving in a number of senior roles in the White House and Congress, including as Deputy Chief of Staff to then-House Speaker John Boehner.
Listen to the full interview.
The Data Foundation report comes at a time when policymakers from both sides of the aisle are actively seeking data-driven solutions to longstanding inefficiencies in federal spending. It presents 10 ranked policy options to improve data infrastructure and modernize verification systems to prevent improper payments across federal benefit programs before payments are made. The five highest-impact options, including mandatory disbursement screening and modernization of existing systems, have the potential to generate billions of dollars of savings.
In the interview, Loper reflects on the political and structural dynamics that have hobbled program integrity efforts in the past, and why this year might be different.
Loper believes that recent growth in the federal debt and annual deficits may motivate leaders in Washington to embrace feasible, high-impact policy options that prevent improper payments in federal benefit programs. Noting that the total federal debt is projected to exceed $40 trillion in September 2026, “the magnitude of the problem in terms of the deficit and compiled debt is just about to break historic records,” he says on the episode.
At the same time, the federal government loses somewhere between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud each year, according to a recent estimate from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Fraud is a type of improper payments, which are broadly payments that should not have been made or that were made in the incorrect amount. An estimated $47 billion in federal improper payments stem directly from failures in identity, marital status, and death data verification, which are challenges that better data infrastructure could address.
“ What's clear is the magnitude of that problem is significant,” Loper says on the episode. “If you can take half of that, or two thirds of that, or three quarters of the upper-end estimate and solve it, then you really could make a notable contribution towards the bigger problem, the fact that we're running these ever-larger deficits.”
The types of changes included as options in the Data Foundation report may seem uncontroversial, such as increasing the frequency of data sharing in certain programs from every quarter to every month so that agencies have up-to-date information on whether benefit recipients are still alive or have the same level of income. And yet, there are structural reasons why major reforms to program integrity don’t happen often, Loper explains on the episode. For example, both Congress and the Executive Branch tend to be fragmented with programmatic silos that hinder a cross-cutting, government-wide approach to preventing payments that are based on inaccurate or out-of-date eligibility information.
Although recent public polling suggests that most American voters support efforts to make the federal government more efficient and root out fraud and wasteful spending, Loper says program integrity lacks a well-organized interest group to advocate for change. “Our democracy functions, for better or for worse, in part based upon the influence of interested parties,” he says. While there are multiple research efforts to address improper payments across the country, as an issue, program integrity doesn’t have a national trade group or professional association demanding that federal programs share data more regularly to improve eligibility screening and prevent improper payments. “There's no vested interest for that point of view,” he says.
Budget scoring may be another obstacle. Some of the options described in the Data Foundation report would require new federal investment in IT modernization and strengthening the overall data infrastructure. Even though those investments might pay for themselves in reduced improper payments, Loper worries that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) would underestimate the potential savings in scoring legislation related to options in the Data Foundation report. Whether investments in IT infrastructure are scored as likely to add or reduce costs could, in turn, affect support in Congress.
“The burden is going to be on those of us who are trying to make these changes to show these efforts can really reduce improper and fraudulent payments,” Loper says on the episode. “Our hope is that we can, in the near term, have some better modeling that we can take to the CBO that says, look, we can—with confidence—estimate that if you invest in this system and you let these three systems better communicate with each other, or we change the law to require this information to be collected more quickly, those things will make a difference in the way these programs are run and the amount of fraud or improper payments that we're preventing, and we can estimate those savings with a higher level of confidence than we could before.”
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Learn more about the Data Foundation's 2026 Advocacy and Policy Agenda, including a priority on evidence-based efficiency that demonstrates an immediate return on investment from the federal evidence infrastructure.
