The federal government overpaid welfare and social services recipients by a stunning $186 billion in fiscal year 2025, a startling surge of $24 billion from the previous year’s total.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), 15 federal agencies made up the massive improper payments overage spanning 64 programs, with approximately 82% of the overages the result of overpayments.
And these are just the mistakes that the government caught — usually not outright fraud, like the billions alleged in Minnesota.
The GAO’s analysis comes as a fraudtask force helmed by Vice President JD Vance seeks to apply pressure to states, including New York, to root out the sources of fraud or risk losing federal funding.
Medicare was responsible for the largest share of overpayments, according to GAO’s analysis, coming in at $57 billion.
Medicare — the second largest government program after Social Security — has a budget of nearly $1.1 trillion.
Medicaid mistakes cost $37 billion, while the government doled out $21 billion for the Earned Income Tax Credit to people who didn’t deserve it.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — food stamps — received $10 billion more than they should have.
The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program, a pandemic-era program that provided billions in emergency COVID-19 relief for certain live venues, museums and movie theaters also got $10 billion too much.
The remaining 59 programs combined made up $51 billion in improper payments.
The issue has long dogged the federal government, with GAO putting the total overpaid since 2003 at a staggering $3 trillion — though the agency says the actual total could be much higher.
The figure includes a dramatic uptick during the pandemic years of 2020-2023, when new programs were quickly developed and existing programs were rapidly expanded, leading to a significantly greater risk of fraud and improper payments, Kristen Kociolek, managing director of GAO’s Financial Management and Assurance team told the Washington Times.
The $186 billion figure omits certain programs that agencies have determined are susceptible to “significant improper payments,” GAO writes, including the Department of Health and Human Services’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which spent roughly $16.5 billion in FY2025.
The agency notes it has made numerous recommendations to Congress and federal agencies in an attempt to close the gap, including in March 2022 during the Biden administration when GAO submitted 10 matters that would enhance accountability of federal spending.
As of April 2026, however, action has been taken on just one of their suggestions.