Four audits later, USDA's disaster-aid error rate is still climbing
Summary
The Emergency Conservation Program-Disasters helps farmers and ranchers repair flood, hurricane, and drought damage. According to USDA's own fiscal year 2024 compliance audit, the program's improper-payment rate was 45.16 percent -- and GAO's tracking table puts the four-year trend at 13.5 percent in FY2021, 29.2 percent in FY2022, 40.4 percent in FY2023, and 45.2 percent in FY2024. It is the only program on GAO's list of long-noncompliant federal programs whose error rate kept climbing every single year rather than eventually turning around. GAO's June 2026 report -- its 11th and final in a congressionally mandated series -- also found USDA is one of six agencies out of seven reviewed that failed to meet a basic annual reporting requirement to Congress about its worst-performing programs, and one of five that still has no documented internal process to make sure it happens.
The worst trend line in the federal government
The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 flags any program with an improper-payment rate at or above 10 percent as noncompliant, and requires escalating corrective steps for each additional consecutive year a program stays above that line. identified seven agencies with programs stuck above 10 percent for 2, 3, or 4 straight years since the law took effect. Six programs across four agencies -- the Departments of Labor, the Treasury, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs -- have been noncompliant for the full four years measured, 2021 through 2024. Of those, three (Labor's unemployment insurance program, Treasury's tax-credit programs, and 's long-term care program) saw their rates fall between 2023 and 2024, even though they remained above 10 percent. 's ECP-Disasters is the only one of the six where the rate kept rising.
View data as table
| FY2021 | 13.5 |
|---|---|
| FY2022 | 29.2 |
| FY2023 | 40.4 |
| FY2024 | 45.2 |
Not confined to one program
ECP-Disasters isn't an isolated failure inside . Across the department's 12 reporting Phase 2 programs -- $150.3 billion in fiscal year 2024 outlays -- reported more than $13.7 billion in improper payments, a 9.11 percent rate, up from 8.13 percent the year before. Seven of those 12 programs failed to fully comply with 's requirements. 's own auditors traced the ECP-Disasters failure to the state agencies that administer it on the ground: they didn't properly follow statutory eligibility rules, didn't access the data needed to validate payments, or didn't review documentation before paying out. When 's Farm Service Agency responded to the finding, it disputed the audit's characterization of a different program's trend line -- not the ECP-Disasters number itself, which stood unchallenged.
View data as table
| FY2023 | 8.1 |
|---|---|
| FY2024 | 9.1 |
And the agency still can't reliably tell Congress about it
requires agencies with noncompliant programs to report certain information annually to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and -- what programs have been noncompliant, and for how long. found that six of the seven agencies it reviewed, including , did not report all of that required annual information for fiscal year 2024; they described planned fixes on a public tracking website, but not the full list of which programs had been noncompliant for consecutive years. Only two of the seven agencies, and AmeriCorps (legally the Corporation for National and Community Service), had a documented, written process to make sure this reporting happens on time. was not one of them: its component agencies have informal monitoring in place, but nothing written into department policy, and no specific timeline to fix that gap.
View data as table
| Met the requirement | 1 |
|---|---|
| Did not meet it | 6 |
USDA's fix, on paper, is due by September 2026
's recommendation to was direct: design and document a process to track, monitor, and submit the required reporting on time. agreed by email and said it would draft internal policy within 30 days, with full implementation targeted for September 30, 2026. isn't the only agency caught flat-footed on process, either -- Treasury didn't realize it had missed its own required report until asked to see a copy, then submitted it to Congress and the budget office roughly nine months late and never sent a copy at all. This report is 's 11th and final installment in a congressionally mandated quarterly series on improper payments, closing out a multi-year record of the same agencies missing the same kinds of deadlines.
The takeaway
- A disaster-relief program's own numbers are the disaster. ECP-Disasters is meant to help farmers recover from floods, wildfires, and drought. Its improper-payment rate went from 13.5 percent to 45.2 percent over four straight years of audits -- the only long-noncompliant federal program tracked by whose error rate never turned around.
- The failure traces to the same root cause every year: unverified eligibility at the state level. 's own auditors found states weren't following eligibility rules, weren't pulling the data needed to check payments, or weren't reviewing documentation before paying out -- and 's response to the finding didn't dispute that number.
- Even the paperwork about the problem is late. is one of six of seven reviewed agencies that failed a basic annual reporting requirement to Congress in FY2024, and one of five without a documented process to guarantee it happens -- a gap has now promised to close by September 2026.
ECP-Disasters and department-wide figures are from Audit Report 50024-0016-11, ''s Compliance with Improper Payment Requirements for Fiscal Year 2024' (May 27, 2025), a performance audit conducted by KPMG LLP under oversight. The four-year rate trend, cross-government reporting-compliance figures, and 's response to 's recommendation are from -26-108044, 'Improper Payments: Agency Actions Needed to Help Save Taxpayer Dollars' (June 4, 2026), the 11th and final report in a congressionally mandated quarterly series. Both were read directly. 's own audit reports the FY2024 rate as 45.16 percent; 's summary table rounds the same underlying figure to 45.2 percent -- both are cited here.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General (performance audit conducted by KPMG LLP under OIG oversight), USDA's Compliance with Improper Payment Requirements for Fiscal Year 2024 (2025-05-27) — Audit Report 50024-0016-11. Downloaded directly from oversight.gov (200 OK, 5,860,000+ bytes). Read in full: transmittal memo, Results in Brief, Background, Objectives/Scope/Methodology, Results and Conclusions (Criteria 1-6), all five Findings and Recommendations (24-01 through 24-05) with agency management responses and 's auditor's responses, and the acronym list. oversight.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Improper Payments: Agency Actions Needed to Help Save Taxpayer Dollars (2026-06-04) — -26-108044, a report to the Subcommittee on Legislative Branch, House Committee on Appropriations -- the 11th and final report in a congressionally mandated quarterly series. Direct fetch from gao.gov returned a 403 (Akamai block on non-browser requests); downloaded instead via the Wayback capture below. Read in full: Highlights, the full Letter (Background, Agency Reporting for Annual and Consecutive Years of Noncompliance with Table 1, the 2/3/4-year reporting-requirement sections with Tables 2 and 3, the Key Practices alignment section, the Agency Processes for Reporting section covering all seven agencies, Conclusions), all six Recommendations for Executive Action, Agency Comments, and Appendix I's list of open Matters for Congressional Consideration. gao.gov · original document
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
The Emergency Conservation Program-Disasters (ECP-Disasters) exists to help farmers and ranchers recover after floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and drought. According to 's own fiscal year 2024 audit, the program's improper-payment rate was 45.16 percent. 's tracking table, drawn from the same underlying data, shows the trend that got it there: 13.5 percent in fiscal year 2021, 29.2 percent in 2022, 40.4 percent in 2023, 45.2 percent in 2024. Every other federal program that has failed the same 10-percent threshold for four consecutive years eventually started improving. This one didn't.