Treasury’s Do Not Pay covers 99% of programs. The law covers 11

Original article can be found here.

(The Center Square) – Treasury screened $3.7 trillion in federal payments through its Do Not Pay system last fiscal year, across nearly every federal program. For all but 11, the law would not let it check a Social Security number.

Do Not Pay lets agencies check who they are about to pay, and whether that person qualifies, before the money goes out.

The department announced the expansion Oct. 6, reporting that access to Do Not Pay grew to 99% of federal programs from about 4% a year earlier, and that a new verification process stopped 13,500 payments worth $175 million headed to deceased people before the money went out.

A Treasury official, who answered questions in writing but would not be named, told The Center Square the department’s access to Social Security Administration identity data is limited by law to “health and income maintenance” programs, a category drawn from the Social Security Act. Within that limit, the official said, payment verification screens Social Security numbers for 11 programs, identified by the accounting codes Treasury assigns to federal spending accounts. The department also cannot check employer identification numbers against IRS records. Treasury did not respond to a request to put the answers on the record.

Death records are where the system is working. The deceased-payee check produced the only result Treasury reported. Federal agencies estimated $186 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2025, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Treasury says it is working with Congress on the authority it needs. Congress nearly delivered it. A bill from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., contained those provisions when it was introduced in April. They were gone by the time the House passed it in June.

The Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act, H.R. 8463, was introduced April 23. It would have given Treasury access to the National Directory of New Hires, a federal repository of new hire, wage and unemployment insurance records. It would have allowed the IRS to share eight categories of return information with Do Not Pay, and required the Social Security Administration to build a name and number verification service for Treasury. The Center Square reviewed the bill as introduced, as reported by the committee and as passed by the House.

The Oversight Committee narrowed the bill at an April 29 markup. An amendment from Comer cut the IRS sharing to taxpayer identity confirmation only, dropped the income data and removed the New Hires access entirely.

The committee described the changes as part of a broader privacy rework that also raised the penalty for misusing the system to $250,000 and made state participation voluntary. The committee approved it 35-1.

The reported bill still contained the Social Security verification service. It is not in the text the House passed under suspension of the rules on June 8.

An Oversight Committee aide, who would not be named, said the Ways and Means Committee determined on June 2, six days before the floor vote, that the section fell entirely within its jurisdiction and objected to it staying in the bill. The section was cut from the text brought up under suspension, and Ways and Means and the Financial Services Committee then provided waivers letting the bill move. Ways and Means did not respond to a message left with the committee office.

Comer told the House the bill was “drafted in coordination with privacy stakeholders to ensure appropriate data protection safeguards for personal and sensitive information.” At the markup, Comer said he was revising the bill “in agreement with the Ranking Member.” Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., speaking for Democrats on the bill, said bipartisan work had improved its privacy protections and transparency provisions.

The aide said the Data Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government data use, was the main privacy voice in those talks. Nick Hart, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement that it provided technical assistance at the committee’s request, “focused on making sure its privacy protections were matched to the data access and use it authorizes.” Hart did not address the removed provisions.

Not every group agreed. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy research center, urged the committee to table the bill and two others, arguing they would let Treasury “accumulate far, far more information than is necessary” and hasten what the group called a national data bank. The letter was entered into the markup record by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who cast the only vote against the bill. EPIC did not respond to questions about its position on the bill as passed.

Without that section, the aide said, Treasury is limited in its ability to confirm that Social Security numbers on payment requests are accurate, and that responsibility now sits with the agency asking for the payment. The aide said the access Treasury sought is similar to what banks and other financial institutions already have through a Social Security verification service Congress authorized in 2018.

H.R. 8463 has been in the Senate since June 9. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced the Protecting American Taxpayers Act, S. 4378, on April 22, a day before Comer introduced his. It carries the IRS sharing, the Social Security verification service and the New Hires access. According to Senate records, it was placed on the calendar five days later and has not moved since. Ernst reintroduced an updated version, S. 4952, in July. It is also on the calendar.

The aide said the House-passed bill lacks the full set of data access authorities Treasury has requested, that the Ernst bill contains them in a different form, and that the Oversight Committee would support their eventual passage. On the House bill’s prospects in the Senate, the aide said the committee is “working to identify a pathway.”

Treasury has been asking for a version of this for years. The Congressional Research Service reported in February 2026 that the department sought National Directory of New Hires access through Do Not Pay in its fiscal 2024 budget request.

Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, said the gap is in what the system was allowed to check.

“The only results Treasury reported from screening $3.7 trillion in payments involved deceased recipients,” she told The Center Square. “Preventing payments to deceased individuals is a win for taxpayers, but death-related errors are among the smallest sources of improper payments.” The data needed to catch larger sources, she said, including identity and employment details, remains off-limits by statute.

Congress returns in November. Both bills are still waiting.