Federal Inspectors General (IGs) found $65 billion in “potential savings” from waste, fraud, and abuse in 2025, following $71 billion in 2024. These watchdogs operate across 72 federal agencies to audit spending and root out improper payments
What IGs do:
• Conduct independent audits and investigations
• Detect and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse
• Maintain hotlines for fraud reporting[ignet]
• Review agency compliance with the Payment Integrity Information Act
Important distinction:
• Fraud: Willful misrepresentation to obtain value
• Error: Unintentional payment errors from complex rules (not fraud)
• Overpayments make up 84% of improper payments (~$135 billion in FY 2024)
IGs are considered central watchdogs protecting taxpayer money, though the Trump administration began firing IGs in 2025, which critics say threatens government accountability. Don’t you wonder why?
Who commits fraud?
• Biggest Areas:
• Medicare and Medicaid: These dominate improper payments and fraud recoveries. Medicare alone often accounts for a large portion (e.g., ~34% in some recent breakdowns). Health care fraud makes up the vast majority of major False Claims Act (FCA) settlements—e.g., over $5.7 billion of $6.8 billion in FY 2025.
• Other significant areas: Unemployment Insurance (especially pandemic-era, with tens to hundreds of billions in fraud), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), SNAP, and procurement/contract fraud.
• Perpetrators by Dollar Impact:
• Providers/Suppliers: Most monetary losses come from healthcare professionals and entities billing for unnecessary services, non-rendered services, upcoding, kickbacks, or phantom claims. DOJ/HHS-OIG enforcement (takedowns, FCA cases) overwhelmingly targets these groups. Beneficiary (individual recipient) fraud is a small fraction.
• Individuals: Commit widespread smaller-scale fraud (e.g., false unemployment claims, EITC tax fraud, identity theft for benefits). Pandemic unemployment fraud involved many individuals and organized groups (domestic and international), with estimates of $100+ billion.
• Organized Groups/Companies/Contractors: Large-scale operations, including transnational criminal organizations, PPP/EIDL fraud, and procurement fraud. These scale up losses significantly.
• Insiders: Government employees or contractors in some cases (e.g., bribes in VA or contracting).
Why did Trump fire IGs?
Here is the consensus. You can believe it or not, but there is no doubt these reasons are consistent with Trump’s actions and behaviors including his widespread corruption.
Why Trump targeted IGs:
- IGs had investigated Trump in his first term — Notably, IG Michael Atkinson forwarded the Ukraine whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment[campaignlegal]
- Some fired IGs were investigating Elon Musk interests — Certain IGs had looked into matters affecting billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk’s business interests, whom Trump appointed to oversee DOGE[americanoversight]
- To prevent ethics investigations — Trump appears to be replacing independent watchdogs with people who would “look the other way” when administration appointees violate ethics laws[campaignlegal]
- To avoid accountability — The firings were “a clear signal of Trump’s intent to evade systems in place to hold him and his administration accountable”[americanoversight]
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