Federal agencies must now disclose payment errors in budget.
S. 747 — Improper Payments Transparency Act · Filed by Pete Ricketts (R-NE) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 26, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires federal agencies to include detailed information about improper payments (overpayments, underpayments, and other payment errors) in the President's annual budget submission to Congress. Agencies must explain why improper payments occurred, show trends over three years, and describe corrective actions they are taking. Citizens and Congress gain transparency into how much taxpayer money is being misspent across federal programs.
Why we flagged it
The bill's sole operative mechanism is a disclosure mandate: it requires federal agencies to report improper payment data, trends, and corrective actions in the President's budget. This is a transparency and accountability measure, not a spending authorization, restriction, or subsidy.
What the text implies
- Improper payment data will be embedded in the President's budget submission, making it part of the official public record and subject to congressional scrutiny and media analysis.
- Agencies will face pressure to explain payment errors and demonstrate corrective action, potentially accelerating internal compliance improvements.
- The three-year trend requirement may expose systemic or worsening payment problems that were previously obscured in agency-level reports.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill increases transparency and accountability by requiring agencies to publicly disclose improper payment problems, trends, and remedies in the President's budget. Citizens and their representatives gain actionable information to oversee federal spending and hold agencies accountable for payment errors.
Named in the bill
Executive agencies, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Congress, 31 U.S.C. § 1105(a), 31 U.S.C. § 3351, 31 U.S.C. § 3352(d)
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 1 Democrats, 1 Republicans.
- Feb 26, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 26, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 3 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $720,409 in lobbying spend. A filing names 37 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Pete Ricketts, the sponsor, reported $1,983,558 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Farm Bureau Fed — $720,409 on 3 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 17, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,180 characters) on Sep 28, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 17, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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