Failed the Law Meant to Catch $13.4B in Bad Payments
Summary
's own inspector general found the department noncompliant with the Payment Integrity Information Act for fiscal 2025, failing 5 of its 10 high-risk programs. Across those programs reported more than $13.4 billion in improper payments for the year. The failures came two ways: four reported error rates at or above the law's flat 10 percent ceiling -- one hit 55.50 percent -- and a fifth never published an estimate at all.
Two ways to fail one law
Four programs -- ECP-Disasters, SNAP, the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program⧉ -- reported rates at or above the law's flat 10 percent ceiling. A fifth, the Summer Food Service Program⧉, published no estimate at all -- you can't exceed a threshold you never measured, so it failed a separate requirement (Criterion 3) by not producing a number.
View data as table
| ECP-Disasters (FSA) | 55.5% | More than five times the legal ceiling -- overpayments alone ran 46.47% |
|---|---|---|
| SNAP (FNA) | 10.9% | Met its own reduction target and still cleared the ceiling |
| NAP (CCC) | 10.6% | Missed its 10.46% target by 0.10 points |
| CACFP (FNA) | 10.5% | Rate rose 1.67 points year over year |
The 55 percent program
ECP-Disasters⧉, the Farm Service Agency's disaster-land-repair program, reported a 55.50 percent improper-and-unknown rate -- more than five times the ceiling. 's own reduction target was 40.41 percent, itself four times the legal ceiling, and it missed even that by 15.09 points⧉. The traced it to staff skipping eligibility checks and paperwork review before payments went out.
The biggest number is
By dollars, the failure is food assistance. SNAP reported a 10.93 percent error rate⧉ and $10.221 billion in loss -- over three-quarters of the combined loss across 's high-priority programs. cut its rate 0.75 points and met its own target, but the ceiling doesn't bend for effort: 10.93 isn't under 10, so it still failed. GAO put SNAP's FY2023 rate at 11.7 percent⧉ -- not a new problem.
View data as table
| SNAP | 10,221 | Food assistance -- more than three-quarters of the five programs' monetary loss |
|---|---|---|
| National School Lunch | 1,390 | School meals |
| Federal Crop Insurance | 755 | Crop insurance |
| CACFP | 446 | Child and adult care food |
| School Breakfast | 428 | School meals |
The program with no number
The quietest failure is the Summer Food Service Program⧉: flagged it as high-risk, legally requiring an estimate, and never produced one. The Food and Nutrition Administration hasn't built a measurement method and doesn't expect a first estimate until FY2029. The legal effect is the same as ECP-Disasters' 55 percent -- noncompliance -- because a program with no published rate can't be shown to meet the ceiling.
The takeaway
- Noncompliance is a range, not a verdict. failed the same law through a program running a 55.50 percent error rate and a program that reported no error rate whatsoever. Both count as failing Criterion 3 or 6; the audit's single 'noncompliant' label flattens a 45-point spread and a total blank into one word.
- Hitting your own target is not the test. met the reduction target set for it and still failed, because the law enforces a flat 10 percent ceiling regardless of the target. Three of the five failing programs cleared the ceiling by a point or less -- close, but the statute draws a hard line, not a curve.
- The rate barely moved. 's department-wide improper-payment rate fell 0.06 percentage points year over year, from 9.11 to 9.05 percent. The audit's remedy is a request that the two agencies describe what they will do to comply -- the same posture as prior years for the three programs that were already noncompliant in FY2024.
Report 50024-0017-11 was performed for the by contractor KPMG LLP; 's affected agencies concurred. The $13.4 billion total and 9.05 percent rate cover nine of ten high-risk programs -- SFSP is excluded since it reported no estimate, so true figures run marginally higher. 'Monetary loss' (second chart) is the narrower recoverable-overpayment slice, not the total improper-and-unknown estimate. figures are FY2023 context, not part of 's FY2025 finding.
Sources(2) ▾
- U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General, USDA's Compliance with Improper Payment Requirements for Fiscal Year 2025 (Audit Report 50024-0017-11) (2026-07-24) — 's annual audit of 's compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 for FY2025, performed for the by contractor KPMG LLP. Source for the overall noncompliance finding (three of six requirements unmet; 5 of 10 high-risk programs noncompliant), the $13.4 billion / 9.05 percent department-wide improper-payment total, the Table 3 program error rates (NAP, ECP-Disasters, CACFP, ), the SFSP non-publication finding, and the program monetary-loss figures. Fetched directly from oversight.gov and converted with pdftotext -layout. oversight.gov · original document
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Improper Payments: USDA's Oversight of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (GAO-24-107461) (2024-09-26) — 's review of oversight of improper payments. Context and corroboration only: source for 's FY2023 improper-payment estimate (11.7 percent, about $10.5 billion of $90.1 billion in outlays), the roughly $2.7 trillion cumulative government-wide improper-payment estimate since FY2003, and 's statement that found noncompliant with certain criteria as far back as FY2023 -- establishing that 's FY2025 failure is a multi-year pattern, not a one-off. gao.gov · original document
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The Payment Integrity Information Act⧉ requires agencies to find, measure, and shrink improper payments in their riskiest programs. On July 24, 2026, USDA's Office of Inspector General⧉ found noncompliant: 5 of its 10 high-risk programs failed, and nine of the ten together reported more than $13.4 billion in improper payments⧉ on $148.3 billion in outlays -- a 9.05 percent error rate, barely moved from 9.11 percent the year before.