Fraud is intolerable, but waste is an even bigger problem

At the Center for Accountability, Modernization, and Innovation (CAMI), we’re laser-focused on ensuring public benefits programs work for the people they’re meant to serve. Our objective is straightforward: getting the right benefits to the right people at the right time in the most efficient and accurate manner possible.

Lately, most of the attention around federal benefits has been focused on rooting out “fraud, waste and abuse.” And certainly, no one can argue with the importance of doing so. But here’s the problem: while eliminating fraud should always be a priority, the terms “fraud, waste and abuse” often get lumped together in political talking points.

But they are not the same — and a failure to recognize the very real differences in both meaning and impact risks implementing “solutions” that miss the mark entirely and ignoring opportunities to make transformational program improvements.

This distinction is not simply academic. As the Government Accountability Office describes it, fraud is willful and criminal. Abuse involves practices that may not break the law but stretch rules or norms — billing the maximum allowable amount regardless of need, or exploiting loopholes that drive up costs without improving outcomes.

Waste is different. Waste is the misuse or inefficient use of resources, even without ill intent: avoidable errors, duplicative and outdated processes, payments based on incomplete documentation, and a failure to share relevant data across programs and geographies. Waste often stems from complexity and weak controls, far more so than bad actors. And ironically, some of the very causes of waste also invite or enable fraud.

The reality is that despite the tenor of much of the current public discourse, waste — not fraud, or even abuse — is actually the principal driving force undermining program results and, as a consequence, eroding public trust. If we are serious about achieving the kind of program integrity that builds trust and delivers results, that is where we have to put the bulk of our energy.

High error rates, process bottlenecks, and inconsistent implementation drain far more resources than the relatively small share lost to deliberate fraud. Waste also slows service, frustrates frontline staff, and erodes confidence among eligible citizens trying to navigate the system.

In other words, waste doesn’t just cost money, it costs outcomes.

Take Florida’s administration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as a case in point. The state faces persistent staffing shortages that contribute directly to processing delays, increased error rates, and frustrated beneficiaries who fall through the cracks.

Meanwhile, federal rules intended to ensure accountability inadvertently tie states’ hands when it comes to flexibly deploying staff where they’re needed most — shuffling workers between application processing, recertification, fraud investigations and call centers based on real-time demand. The result? Backlogs pile up, errors skyrocket, eligible families wait weeks or months for benefits, and caseworkers burn out trying to navigate systems designed for a different era.

This must change. We should be maximizing flexibilities (within careful immutable guardrails) not limiting them. Likewise, state and local budgets must be aligned with the technology investment needs associated with modernization — needs that have existed but been largely ignored for far too long.

As a core objective, program integrity, which in its broadest sense, is about getting benefits to the right people at the right time in the most accurate manner possible, is what matters most. A program with high program integrity serves the interests of the beneficiary and the taxpayer alike.

But achieving it requires a comprehensive framework for facilitating efficiency and innovation while preventing, detecting and correcting errors before dollars go out the door and before people are harmed by delays or denials.

CAMI will always call out fraud when we see it. But if we’re serious about impact, attacking waste, and its many process and policy causes, will actually deliver far more impactful results. It won’t be easy. Entrenched silos will need to be broken down. New and innovative collaborations and partnerships must be fostered.

But in the end, that’s how you build programs that perform as we all have a right to expect. That’s how you build trust.

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Stan Soloway is the Board Chair at the Center for Accountability, Modernization, and Innovation.