Congressional Testimony
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USDA IG Walk Testifies Before House Oversight & Government Reform Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by John Walk, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
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Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, thank you for inviting me to testify on Supplemental Nutrition ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by John Walk, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. * * * Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, thank you for inviting me to testify on Supplemental NutritionAssistance Program (SNAP) fraud. I am pleased to offer my perspective on this important issue as the Inspector General of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA). SNAP fraud is a reprehensible crime that squanders the compassion of American taxpayers who fund the program and robs from those low-income Americans who qualify for SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their families. My testimony today will provide an overview of SNAP, examine different kinds of SNAP fraud, and discuss ways in which SNAP fraud can be deterred on the State and Federal level.
SNAP fraud has evolved. It is not confined to a single individual who engages in deceptive practices to apply for SNAP benefits for which they are not eligible. Perpetrators of SNAP Fraud include highly organized, tech-savvy, sophisticated criminals that steal enormous sums of money.
Proceeds of SNAP fraud have gone to individuals linked to terrorist groups, foreign adversary nations, and transnational criminal organizations.
SNAP Overview
SNAP is the nation's largest domestic food assistance program. In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the program served 41.7 million individuals in an average month at an annual Federal cost of over $100 billion. SNAP benefits may be used to buy eligible food at more than 250,000 USDA authorized retailers nationwide. With Federal regulatory oversight, administration of SNAP at the local level is managed by State agencies that review applications and determine if households qualify for assistance. Benefit amounts are based on household size and financial circumstances.
SNAP benefits are issued to recipients on electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards monthly.
Program participants may purchase food in exchange for SNAP benefits at retail locations.
SNAP fraud is not a victimless crime, although its victims are often forgotten. Not long after becoming Inspector General, one of my Special Agents shared with me the story of a SNAP recipient, a mother of four, who discovered that her SNAP benefits were stolen from her EBT card while attempting to pay for food at the grocery store. In tears, she reported the crime and asked how she would feed her family for the month until benefits would next be paid out. In another instance, a victim said her three children had to consume food that was obtained from food banks for an entire month while she and her husband consumed minimal food after her SNAP benefits were stolen. One complaint from our hotline alleged that someone in New Jersey had hacked her electronic transfer benefits. The victim did not know anyone in New Jersey, nor did she authorize the $318 in transactions made, which left the victim with nothing on her EBT card. The victim continued, "This is unfair to my 8-year-old child and I, now leaving us desperately hungry for 30 days until reimbursement." The effects of SNAP fraud are far-reaching and can have devastating impacts. OIG is committed to finding the bad actors that steal innocent victims' benefits and working with prosecutors to bring them to justice, thereby restoring integrity to SNAP so that families who appropriately rely on SNAP benefits do not have to go hungry.
SNAP Fraud
In providing SNAP oversight, OIG uses a multi-pronged approach that involves our Office of Investigations, Office of Audit, and Office of Analytics and Innovation. Our Office of Investigations employs specific law enforcement authorities, tools, and techniques to conduct SNAP fraud investigations, and this work is intended to result in appropriate actions to resolve allegations and to prevent and deter instances of illegal or fraudulent acts or misconduct. Our Office of Audit conducts reviews of SNAP intended to improve USDA's administration of the program. Our Office of Analytics and Innovation uses data analytics and tools to identify patterns of fraud and support the work of investigators and auditors.
Due to limited time, I will highlight some of the prevalent forms of SNAP fraud, though we constantly monitor efforts to create or exploit vulnerabilities in SNAP administration that can emerge at any time.
With the rise in the use of electronic benefits information technology, fraud schemes are becoming more advanced, exploiting modern financial payment systems. Many news outlets have reported on the widespread scheme known as EBT card skimming. Card skimming occurs when criminals install illegal skimming devices on, for example, ATMs, gas pumps, and merchant point-of-sale terminals. EBT cards are not immune as fraudsters use skimming technology to capture information such as the card number, personal identification number, and other information stored on the card. A fraudster can deploy a skimmer in a terminal in as little as seven seconds. The captured card information is then used to clone the victim's EBT card.
Criminals will then cash out at the opportune time--usually when the card is loaded for the month. The legitimate recipient is left without food assistance for the next month, and American tax dollars are looted. Because cards are loaded monthly, the process is repetitive and predictable, creating a target rich environment for skimmers.
In one recent investigation, in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Louisiana, five Romanian nationals were indicted in a fraud scheme to steal nearly $1 million in SNAP benefits from low-income families by skimming. According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly conspired to install skimming devices onto legitimate card readers at retailers in Ohio and California. To carry out the SNAP benefits theft in Ohio, skimmers were mailed from California to several local locations in Ohio, then placed on point-of-sale devices at food retailers and gas stations. Defendants then checked card balances before draining the EBT accounts of their funds to load onto blank cards, which they then illegally re-sold.
These vulnerabilities in the SNAP payment system can also be a target for Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)-designated Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) groups. In one investigation in Louisiana, two Romanian nationals were indicted for access device fraud.
According to court documents, the two individuals possessed device-making equipment, namely credit/debit card skimmers, at multiple locations. Both subjects are confirmed to be part of TOC groups. According to the FBI, TOC groups protect their activities through corruption, violence, and an organizational structure that spans national boundaries. These groups also engage in drug trafficking and human smuggling. Some groups use the illicit proceeds to fund other crimes, including, potentially, terrorism.
SNAP trafficking is also a serious concern for OIG. Today, there are more than 250,000 food retail stores authorized to exchange food for SNAP benefits, including popular grocery chains, big box retailers, convenience stores, and bodegas. These retailers participate in SNAP as an important part of the distribution channel that supplies food to program recipients. When EBT cards are used at their stores to buy food, retailers then make claims for Federal reimbursement.
Unscrupulous retailers will instead use their stores to launder SNAP benefits for cash. An individual will sell their EBT card, sometimes for pennies on the dollar in cash, and the retailer will extract the remaining value from the card or sell it.
Trafficking can also include exchanging SNAP benefits for other ineligible items like guns and drugs. In Operation "Mic Drop," USDA OIG special agents supported local and Federal law enforcement to investigate SNAP trafficking at a local store in southern California. Over $2 million was stolen from American taxpayers in the scheme. SNAP EBT benefits were exchanged with store employees for cash and then used to buy illicit drugs like crack cocaine from gang members located at the store. According to the San Diego District Attorney's Office, gang members used the money "to buy guns, which were used to perpetuate the cycle of violence." SNAP fraud enabled by corrupt retail stores can create a gateway for other violent crimes that can victimize entire communities by propping up a hub for criminality. OIG is committed to prevent SNAP benefits from funding gang activity and illegal drug purchases.
EBT terminal fraud is also a growing concern. State administrative agencies contract with thirdparty processors to facilitate Federal reimbursement to retailers that exchange food for SNAP benefits. To become authorized to receive SNAP, the USDA Food and Nutrition Administration (FNA) must determine that the store complies with program rules and issues a unique identifier.
Terminal cloning, or processor fraud, describes the use of unauthorized terminals that allow fraudsters to impersonate an authorized retailer and direct SNAP payments to their own bank accounts. In a recently closed case from last year, a single terminal cloning scheme resulted in a $66 million loss. Shamefully, the theft was made possible by a USDA employee who betrayed her Oath of Office and sold FNA numbers to co-conspirators. That employee was sentenced in the Southern District of New York to 2 years in Federal prison. OIG will continue to pursue insider threats who abuse their public position for personal profit.
OIG's audit work is crucial to the fight against fraud by identifying the systems, processes and structural safeguards appropriate to prevent schemes, ensure proper payments and promote program integrity. For example, we recently determined whether FNA has taken actions to secure information technology hardware to effectively prevent SNAP benefit theft through card skimming, card and terminal cloning, and other similar fraudulent methods. We found that FNA has taken steps to improve SNAP EBT security; however, FNA has not required States to adopt security standards to prevent SNAP benefit theft, resulting in $555 million in funds to be put to better use. We made one recommendation to FNA to develop a plan to issue regulations for States to implement SNAP EBT security measures. FNA agreed with our finding and is taking corrective action.
Deterring SNAP Fraud
Deterring fraud requires exacting real consequences on those that steal from taxpayers and the low-income Americans who qualify for SNAP assistance. OIG is steadfastly committed to investigating SNAP fraud and working with prosecutors to hold perpetrators to account. Since February 2025, OIG investigations have led to arrest of nearly 1,000 individuals; 133 convictions; and more than $135 million in restitution, fines, and assessments for SNAP-related violations. This remains one of OIG's top law enforcement priorities. We are proud of our partnerships with Federal, State, and local authorities to investigate allegations of fraud and our work with prosecutors to hold fraudsters to account.
Although a strong law enforcement response is critical, we cannot pay and chase our way to stopping SNAP fraud. To be effective, we need to guard the front door by ensuring that proper internal controls are in place to prevent fraudsters from infiltrating the system. Modern technology available to criminals makes it imperative that administering agencies at the State and Federal levels adopt appropriate modern technology and tools to verify an applicant's identity and other information provided before making payments. With the availability of online SNAP applications and internet food purchases, identity verification and authentication are critical to prevent fraud rather than chasing after criminals.
For example, earlier this year, in a case investigated by USDA OIG, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts charged three people, including two foreign nationals, for using the stolen personal information of over 100 real people from multiple States to fraudulently obtain $440,000 in SNAP benefits. In a different case, an Idaho jury convicted an individual for using the identity of a child from a different State who died in 1977 to obtain benefits from numerous Federal programs, including SNAP. These crimes took place across multiple States and persisted for a long period of time, revealing serious flaws in identity verification. Verifying an applicant's identity and other information provided before making a payment would deter cases such as these.
In addition, we need to be sure that every part of the process is working together to create a hostile operating environment for any would-be fraudster. Distributing food to eligible SNAP recipients involves a patchwork of Federal, State, and local actors, third-party intermediaries, financial institutions, and more than 250,000 retail operations. Each link in this chain is a potential entry point for fraud. Moreover, enforcement is divided between Federal, State, and local agencies. Information silos and lack of coordination create openings for criminals to exploit.
Our ability to identify and prevent SNAP fraud would benefit tremendously from improved information sharing between the Federal Government and the States. Although USDA maintains data on authorized retailers, individual States maintain data on their own program participants.
Access to this important information would allow Federal oversight to evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls at the applicant level and help fix vulnerabilities. For example, after Ohio shared participant data in response to our request, OIG auditors identified $13.3 million in data anomalies. With the results, before public release of our report, Ohio already began taking steps to address the findings. Our audit inspection and analytics work in Ohio is part of a series of engagements to assess the quality and integrity of SNAP participant data, with a focus on the information States use to validate participant eligibility. We chose the top 10 States for SNAP spending to conduct this inspection. OIG is still waiting for participant data from four States after requesting the information more than a year ago. Without the requested data, we cannot even begin to identify potential problems at the State level, much less make recommendations to improve them.
Withholding data from the watchdog Congress created to guard the front door not only obstructs essential Federal oversight, but it benefits fraudsters who steal from the individuals in their States who rely on USDA food assistance. Access to participant information across the program would allow more effective use of data analytics tools to identify fraud, such as duplicate enrollments and suspicious patterns. SNAP administering authorities need a common operating picture to connect the dots.
The convicted criminal that used the identity of a deceased child to get Federal benefits circumvented fraud controls across multiple Federal agencies over the course of 25 years. In OIG's experience, it is common for fraudsters to exploit more than one Federal assistance program in multiple jurisdictions. Access to comprehensive information about the use of Federal assistance programs by individuals across States and agencies will help administrators connect the dots before tax dollars are inappropriately paid out. Linking and leveraging detection and prevention systems across Federal and State agencies is a force multiplier against fraud. Greater access among agencies to each other's data is an important fraud prevention measure.
Low-tech security measures associated with SNAP are outmatched by hi-tech schemes. For example, almost all States continue to load benefits on magnetic strip cards, a decades-old technology that is far behind security measures of modern card payment systems. OIG recently completed an audit of the security of these EBT cards and recommended improvements. State and Federal SNAP administering agencies should evaluate and address potential security vulnerabilities across the system so there are no soft entry points for fraud. Fraud identification, detection, and prevention systems should be updated to meet the tactics of modern fraudsters.
Conclusion
In closing, I would like to thank the Members of the Subcommittee for your continuing interest in SNAP fraud and OIG's work to identify, detect, and prevent fraud. Your support enables OIG to continue ensuring SNAP runs as intended, confirming benefits reach intended recipients, stopping fraud, and bringing those to justice who seek to defraud the program.
This concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
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Original text here: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Walk-Written-Testimony.pdf
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Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, thank you for inviting me to testify on Supplemental Nutrition ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by John Walk, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. * * * Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Stansbury, and Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, thank you for inviting me to testify on Supplemental NutritionAssistance Program (SNAP) fraud. I am pleased to offer my perspective on this important issue as the Inspector General of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA). SNAP fraud is a reprehensible crime that squanders the compassion of American taxpayers who fund the program and robs from those low-income Americans who qualify for SNAP benefits to feed themselves and their families. My testimony today will provide an overview of SNAP, examine different kinds of SNAP fraud, and discuss ways in which SNAP fraud can be deterred on the State and Federal level.
SNAP fraud has evolved. It is not confined to a single individual who engages in deceptive practices to apply for SNAP benefits for which they are not eligible. Perpetrators of SNAP Fraud include highly organized, tech-savvy, sophisticated criminals that steal enormous sums of money.
Proceeds of SNAP fraud have gone to individuals linked to terrorist groups, foreign adversary nations, and transnational criminal organizations.
SNAP Overview
SNAP is the nation's largest domestic food assistance program. In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the program served 41.7 million individuals in an average month at an annual Federal cost of over $100 billion. SNAP benefits may be used to buy eligible food at more than 250,000 USDA authorized retailers nationwide. With Federal regulatory oversight, administration of SNAP at the local level is managed by State agencies that review applications and determine if households qualify for assistance. Benefit amounts are based on household size and financial circumstances.
SNAP benefits are issued to recipients on electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards monthly.
Program participants may purchase food in exchange for SNAP benefits at retail locations.
SNAP fraud is not a victimless crime, although its victims are often forgotten. Not long after becoming Inspector General, one of my Special Agents shared with me the story of a SNAP recipient, a mother of four, who discovered that her SNAP benefits were stolen from her EBT card while attempting to pay for food at the grocery store. In tears, she reported the crime and asked how she would feed her family for the month until benefits would next be paid out. In another instance, a victim said her three children had to consume food that was obtained from food banks for an entire month while she and her husband consumed minimal food after her SNAP benefits were stolen. One complaint from our hotline alleged that someone in New Jersey had hacked her electronic transfer benefits. The victim did not know anyone in New Jersey, nor did she authorize the $318 in transactions made, which left the victim with nothing on her EBT card. The victim continued, "This is unfair to my 8-year-old child and I, now leaving us desperately hungry for 30 days until reimbursement." The effects of SNAP fraud are far-reaching and can have devastating impacts. OIG is committed to finding the bad actors that steal innocent victims' benefits and working with prosecutors to bring them to justice, thereby restoring integrity to SNAP so that families who appropriately rely on SNAP benefits do not have to go hungry.
SNAP Fraud
In providing SNAP oversight, OIG uses a multi-pronged approach that involves our Office of Investigations, Office of Audit, and Office of Analytics and Innovation. Our Office of Investigations employs specific law enforcement authorities, tools, and techniques to conduct SNAP fraud investigations, and this work is intended to result in appropriate actions to resolve allegations and to prevent and deter instances of illegal or fraudulent acts or misconduct. Our Office of Audit conducts reviews of SNAP intended to improve USDA's administration of the program. Our Office of Analytics and Innovation uses data analytics and tools to identify patterns of fraud and support the work of investigators and auditors.
Due to limited time, I will highlight some of the prevalent forms of SNAP fraud, though we constantly monitor efforts to create or exploit vulnerabilities in SNAP administration that can emerge at any time.
With the rise in the use of electronic benefits information technology, fraud schemes are becoming more advanced, exploiting modern financial payment systems. Many news outlets have reported on the widespread scheme known as EBT card skimming. Card skimming occurs when criminals install illegal skimming devices on, for example, ATMs, gas pumps, and merchant point-of-sale terminals. EBT cards are not immune as fraudsters use skimming technology to capture information such as the card number, personal identification number, and other information stored on the card. A fraudster can deploy a skimmer in a terminal in as little as seven seconds. The captured card information is then used to clone the victim's EBT card.
Criminals will then cash out at the opportune time--usually when the card is loaded for the month. The legitimate recipient is left without food assistance for the next month, and American tax dollars are looted. Because cards are loaded monthly, the process is repetitive and predictable, creating a target rich environment for skimmers.
In one recent investigation, in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Louisiana, five Romanian nationals were indicted in a fraud scheme to steal nearly $1 million in SNAP benefits from low-income families by skimming. According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly conspired to install skimming devices onto legitimate card readers at retailers in Ohio and California. To carry out the SNAP benefits theft in Ohio, skimmers were mailed from California to several local locations in Ohio, then placed on point-of-sale devices at food retailers and gas stations. Defendants then checked card balances before draining the EBT accounts of their funds to load onto blank cards, which they then illegally re-sold.
These vulnerabilities in the SNAP payment system can also be a target for Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)-designated Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) groups. In one investigation in Louisiana, two Romanian nationals were indicted for access device fraud.
According to court documents, the two individuals possessed device-making equipment, namely credit/debit card skimmers, at multiple locations. Both subjects are confirmed to be part of TOC groups. According to the FBI, TOC groups protect their activities through corruption, violence, and an organizational structure that spans national boundaries. These groups also engage in drug trafficking and human smuggling. Some groups use the illicit proceeds to fund other crimes, including, potentially, terrorism.
SNAP trafficking is also a serious concern for OIG. Today, there are more than 250,000 food retail stores authorized to exchange food for SNAP benefits, including popular grocery chains, big box retailers, convenience stores, and bodegas. These retailers participate in SNAP as an important part of the distribution channel that supplies food to program recipients. When EBT cards are used at their stores to buy food, retailers then make claims for Federal reimbursement.
Unscrupulous retailers will instead use their stores to launder SNAP benefits for cash. An individual will sell their EBT card, sometimes for pennies on the dollar in cash, and the retailer will extract the remaining value from the card or sell it.
Trafficking can also include exchanging SNAP benefits for other ineligible items like guns and drugs. In Operation "Mic Drop," USDA OIG special agents supported local and Federal law enforcement to investigate SNAP trafficking at a local store in southern California. Over $2 million was stolen from American taxpayers in the scheme. SNAP EBT benefits were exchanged with store employees for cash and then used to buy illicit drugs like crack cocaine from gang members located at the store. According to the San Diego District Attorney's Office, gang members used the money "to buy guns, which were used to perpetuate the cycle of violence." SNAP fraud enabled by corrupt retail stores can create a gateway for other violent crimes that can victimize entire communities by propping up a hub for criminality. OIG is committed to prevent SNAP benefits from funding gang activity and illegal drug purchases.
EBT terminal fraud is also a growing concern. State administrative agencies contract with thirdparty processors to facilitate Federal reimbursement to retailers that exchange food for SNAP benefits. To become authorized to receive SNAP, the USDA Food and Nutrition Administration (FNA) must determine that the store complies with program rules and issues a unique identifier.
Terminal cloning, or processor fraud, describes the use of unauthorized terminals that allow fraudsters to impersonate an authorized retailer and direct SNAP payments to their own bank accounts. In a recently closed case from last year, a single terminal cloning scheme resulted in a $66 million loss. Shamefully, the theft was made possible by a USDA employee who betrayed her Oath of Office and sold FNA numbers to co-conspirators. That employee was sentenced in the Southern District of New York to 2 years in Federal prison. OIG will continue to pursue insider threats who abuse their public position for personal profit.
OIG's audit work is crucial to the fight against fraud by identifying the systems, processes and structural safeguards appropriate to prevent schemes, ensure proper payments and promote program integrity. For example, we recently determined whether FNA has taken actions to secure information technology hardware to effectively prevent SNAP benefit theft through card skimming, card and terminal cloning, and other similar fraudulent methods. We found that FNA has taken steps to improve SNAP EBT security; however, FNA has not required States to adopt security standards to prevent SNAP benefit theft, resulting in $555 million in funds to be put to better use. We made one recommendation to FNA to develop a plan to issue regulations for States to implement SNAP EBT security measures. FNA agreed with our finding and is taking corrective action.
Deterring SNAP Fraud
Deterring fraud requires exacting real consequences on those that steal from taxpayers and the low-income Americans who qualify for SNAP assistance. OIG is steadfastly committed to investigating SNAP fraud and working with prosecutors to hold perpetrators to account. Since February 2025, OIG investigations have led to arrest of nearly 1,000 individuals; 133 convictions; and more than $135 million in restitution, fines, and assessments for SNAP-related violations. This remains one of OIG's top law enforcement priorities. We are proud of our partnerships with Federal, State, and local authorities to investigate allegations of fraud and our work with prosecutors to hold fraudsters to account.
Although a strong law enforcement response is critical, we cannot pay and chase our way to stopping SNAP fraud. To be effective, we need to guard the front door by ensuring that proper internal controls are in place to prevent fraudsters from infiltrating the system. Modern technology available to criminals makes it imperative that administering agencies at the State and Federal levels adopt appropriate modern technology and tools to verify an applicant's identity and other information provided before making payments. With the availability of online SNAP applications and internet food purchases, identity verification and authentication are critical to prevent fraud rather than chasing after criminals.
For example, earlier this year, in a case investigated by USDA OIG, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts charged three people, including two foreign nationals, for using the stolen personal information of over 100 real people from multiple States to fraudulently obtain $440,000 in SNAP benefits. In a different case, an Idaho jury convicted an individual for using the identity of a child from a different State who died in 1977 to obtain benefits from numerous Federal programs, including SNAP. These crimes took place across multiple States and persisted for a long period of time, revealing serious flaws in identity verification. Verifying an applicant's identity and other information provided before making a payment would deter cases such as these.
In addition, we need to be sure that every part of the process is working together to create a hostile operating environment for any would-be fraudster. Distributing food to eligible SNAP recipients involves a patchwork of Federal, State, and local actors, third-party intermediaries, financial institutions, and more than 250,000 retail operations. Each link in this chain is a potential entry point for fraud. Moreover, enforcement is divided between Federal, State, and local agencies. Information silos and lack of coordination create openings for criminals to exploit.
Our ability to identify and prevent SNAP fraud would benefit tremendously from improved information sharing between the Federal Government and the States. Although USDA maintains data on authorized retailers, individual States maintain data on their own program participants.
Access to this important information would allow Federal oversight to evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls at the applicant level and help fix vulnerabilities. For example, after Ohio shared participant data in response to our request, OIG auditors identified $13.3 million in data anomalies. With the results, before public release of our report, Ohio already began taking steps to address the findings. Our audit inspection and analytics work in Ohio is part of a series of engagements to assess the quality and integrity of SNAP participant data, with a focus on the information States use to validate participant eligibility. We chose the top 10 States for SNAP spending to conduct this inspection. OIG is still waiting for participant data from four States after requesting the information more than a year ago. Without the requested data, we cannot even begin to identify potential problems at the State level, much less make recommendations to improve them.
Withholding data from the watchdog Congress created to guard the front door not only obstructs essential Federal oversight, but it benefits fraudsters who steal from the individuals in their States who rely on USDA food assistance. Access to participant information across the program would allow more effective use of data analytics tools to identify fraud, such as duplicate enrollments and suspicious patterns. SNAP administering authorities need a common operating picture to connect the dots.
The convicted criminal that used the identity of a deceased child to get Federal benefits circumvented fraud controls across multiple Federal agencies over the course of 25 years. In OIG's experience, it is common for fraudsters to exploit more than one Federal assistance program in multiple jurisdictions. Access to comprehensive information about the use of Federal assistance programs by individuals across States and agencies will help administrators connect the dots before tax dollars are inappropriately paid out. Linking and leveraging detection and prevention systems across Federal and State agencies is a force multiplier against fraud. Greater access among agencies to each other's data is an important fraud prevention measure.
Low-tech security measures associated with SNAP are outmatched by hi-tech schemes. For example, almost all States continue to load benefits on magnetic strip cards, a decades-old technology that is far behind security measures of modern card payment systems. OIG recently completed an audit of the security of these EBT cards and recommended improvements. State and Federal SNAP administering agencies should evaluate and address potential security vulnerabilities across the system so there are no soft entry points for fraud. Fraud identification, detection, and prevention systems should be updated to meet the tactics of modern fraudsters.
Conclusion
In closing, I would like to thank the Members of the Subcommittee for your continuing interest in SNAP fraud and OIG's work to identify, detect, and prevent fraud. Your support enables OIG to continue ensuring SNAP runs as intended, confirming benefits reach intended recipients, stopping fraud, and bringing those to justice who seek to defraud the program.
This concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
* * *
Original text here: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Walk-Written-Testimony.pdf
U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Program Coordinator Williams Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Colin Williams, coordinator of the Mineral Resources Program at the U.S. Department of the Interior Geological Survey, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative.
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Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Colin Williams, coordinator of the Mineral Resources Program at the U.S. Department of the Interior Geological Survey, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Mapping Resources Initiative,or Earth MRI.
The public lands and minerals stewarded by the Department of the Interior (Department) include more than 480 million acres of surface land, 750 million acres of subsurface and mineral estate, and more than 3.2 billion acres offshore. The mineral resources contained in these lands are critical to achieving American energy dominance, and their development will power our economy, bolster national defense, and support emerging technologies. Non-energy minerals produced from public lands generate billions of dollars to the economy and support tens of thousands of jobs.
The Organic Act of 1879 charged the USGS with examining the Nation's geological structure and mineral resources. Today, the USGS serves as a "one-stop shop" for important information on mineral supply chains and the mineral industry. Our data shows that over the last 60 years, demand for critical minerals has increased dramatically while U.S. production and processing have declined precipitously. A recent analysis in the U.S. indicated that geologic mapping alone provides an economic return on investment conservatively estimated at seven to ten times its cost and potentially as high as 35 times the cost./1
Recognizing that mineral development is a national security priority, the Department is committed to ensuring the United States is the leading producer and processor of critical minerals, including rare earth elements, in order to create jobs and prosperity at home, strengthen domestic supply chains, and reduce the global influence of adversarial states.
Earth MRI Overview
The USGS launched Earth MRI in 2019 in response to President Trump's issuance of Executive Order 13817, A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals, which called for modernizing geological, geophysical, and topographic mapping in areas with potential deposits of critical mineral resources. The USGS conceived Earth MRI as a partnership with state geological surveys, other Federal agencies, and the private sector. This partnering led directly to the first national map of areas with critical mineral potential,/2 which helps USGS prioritize new data collection efforts needed to quantify mineral resource potential, and provides land managers, industry, and other stakeholders with a shared understanding of the potential distribution of critical mineral resources.
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1 Berg, R. C., and Faulds, J. E., 2025, Economic analysis of the costs and benefits of geological mapping in the United States of America from 1994 to 2019: American Geosciences Institute, https://doi.org/10.62322/wra5.gs9v.
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At the time of Earth MRI's creation, less than seven percent of the nation was covered by magnetic and radiometric geophysical surveys at a resolution suited to characterizing mineral deposits. Today, Earth MRI has nearly quadrupled this coverage, and is on track to collect high-resolution data for over half of the areas in the U.S. with known potential for critical mineral deposits by the end of 2026. Earth MRI surveys have covered the Minnesota Iron Range, Alabama graphite belt, Idaho cobalt belt, Colorado mineral belt, and a region of Nebraska that may have the largest niobium deposit in the U.S. The program has also studied the world's largest lithium deposits in Nevada and Oregon, and areas near California's Mountain Pass mine, which produces 10 percent of the world's rare earth elements. However, much of the country still lacks the geologic data necessary to locate and quantify critical mineral resources at large.
Earth MRI Impacts
USGS Earth MRI is already accelerating the Nation's mineral economy. Since 2019, Earth MRI has contributed to a surge of about 100,000 new mineral claims on federal lands. Notable examples of Earth MRI supporting increased mineral exploration and development include a survey detecting previously unknown potential for niobium and rare earth elements in Maine; data on graphite and rare earth elements leading to new mining permits in Wyoming's Laramie Mountains; and mapping in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands in Alaska prompting companies to begin prospecting and sampling in the area.
Data from Earth MRI has also led to new mining claims tied to re-mining historic mine waste, a potential source for potentially 35 out of 60 of the minerals on the 2025 List of Critical Minerals.
The program has also launched the National Mine Waste Inventory, trained states in characterizing minerals in mine waste, and collaborated with NASA on the world's largest airborne hyperspectral survey to examine critical minerals in mine waste as well as undiscovered mineral deposits.
Earth MRI has broader applications beyond mineral development. For example, Earth MRI geophysics data is helping reveal buried fault systems across Arkansas. In California, Earth MRI data is being used to assess potential coproduction of geothermal energy and critical minerals in the Salton Sea, and has revealed previously unknown faults in the San Andreas system. Earth MRI data has also supported Arizona Geological Survey's establishment of a new geologic core repository that has sparked innovative industry partnerships and is being used to train the next generation of economic geologists.
Future of Earth MRI
* * *
2 Hammarstrom, J.M., Kreiner, D.C., Dicken, C.L., and Woodruff, L.G., 2023, National map of focus areas for potential critical mineral resources in the United States: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2023-3007, 4 p., https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20233007
* * *
The USGS is committed to maintaining Earth MRI's collaborative approach moving forward. We continue to rely on the national map of critical mineral potential to prioritize and coordinate with partners as we modernize the nation's geologic mapping, geochemistry, and geophysical survey coverage. In addition to using airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys to identify and map buried mineral deposits, we are allocating funds to a small number of additional types of geophysical studies and tools. As the List of Critical Minerals has expanded, the USGS is actively evaluating areas of the country for further ore deposit research and discovery.
In 2026 and 2027, the USGS plans to advance data delivery and develop new products to make Earth MRI data immediately useful to industry, small businesses, permitting entities, and state, Tribal, and local governments. We also plan to expand artificial intelligence tools that we have piloted in collaboration with the Department of War's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Energy to help a wider range of users interpret Earth MRI results.
Conclusion
As Earth MRI continues to modernize our mapping of the nation's minerals, it is providing insights that are essential for securing our mineral supply chains, strengthening our future economic and national security, and making clear, science-based decisions for responsible resource management. The USGS appreciates the Subcommittee's interest in the Earth MRI program, and looks forward to future collaboration on this important issue.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-WilliamsC-20260625.pdf
* * *
Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Colin Williams, coordinator of the Mineral Resources Program at the U.S. Department of the Interior Geological Survey, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Earth Mapping Resources Initiative,or Earth MRI.
The public lands and minerals stewarded by the Department of the Interior (Department) include more than 480 million acres of surface land, 750 million acres of subsurface and mineral estate, and more than 3.2 billion acres offshore. The mineral resources contained in these lands are critical to achieving American energy dominance, and their development will power our economy, bolster national defense, and support emerging technologies. Non-energy minerals produced from public lands generate billions of dollars to the economy and support tens of thousands of jobs.
The Organic Act of 1879 charged the USGS with examining the Nation's geological structure and mineral resources. Today, the USGS serves as a "one-stop shop" for important information on mineral supply chains and the mineral industry. Our data shows that over the last 60 years, demand for critical minerals has increased dramatically while U.S. production and processing have declined precipitously. A recent analysis in the U.S. indicated that geologic mapping alone provides an economic return on investment conservatively estimated at seven to ten times its cost and potentially as high as 35 times the cost./1
Recognizing that mineral development is a national security priority, the Department is committed to ensuring the United States is the leading producer and processor of critical minerals, including rare earth elements, in order to create jobs and prosperity at home, strengthen domestic supply chains, and reduce the global influence of adversarial states.
Earth MRI Overview
The USGS launched Earth MRI in 2019 in response to President Trump's issuance of Executive Order 13817, A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals, which called for modernizing geological, geophysical, and topographic mapping in areas with potential deposits of critical mineral resources. The USGS conceived Earth MRI as a partnership with state geological surveys, other Federal agencies, and the private sector. This partnering led directly to the first national map of areas with critical mineral potential,/2 which helps USGS prioritize new data collection efforts needed to quantify mineral resource potential, and provides land managers, industry, and other stakeholders with a shared understanding of the potential distribution of critical mineral resources.
* * *
1 Berg, R. C., and Faulds, J. E., 2025, Economic analysis of the costs and benefits of geological mapping in the United States of America from 1994 to 2019: American Geosciences Institute, https://doi.org/10.62322/wra5.gs9v.
* * *
At the time of Earth MRI's creation, less than seven percent of the nation was covered by magnetic and radiometric geophysical surveys at a resolution suited to characterizing mineral deposits. Today, Earth MRI has nearly quadrupled this coverage, and is on track to collect high-resolution data for over half of the areas in the U.S. with known potential for critical mineral deposits by the end of 2026. Earth MRI surveys have covered the Minnesota Iron Range, Alabama graphite belt, Idaho cobalt belt, Colorado mineral belt, and a region of Nebraska that may have the largest niobium deposit in the U.S. The program has also studied the world's largest lithium deposits in Nevada and Oregon, and areas near California's Mountain Pass mine, which produces 10 percent of the world's rare earth elements. However, much of the country still lacks the geologic data necessary to locate and quantify critical mineral resources at large.
Earth MRI Impacts
USGS Earth MRI is already accelerating the Nation's mineral economy. Since 2019, Earth MRI has contributed to a surge of about 100,000 new mineral claims on federal lands. Notable examples of Earth MRI supporting increased mineral exploration and development include a survey detecting previously unknown potential for niobium and rare earth elements in Maine; data on graphite and rare earth elements leading to new mining permits in Wyoming's Laramie Mountains; and mapping in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands in Alaska prompting companies to begin prospecting and sampling in the area.
Data from Earth MRI has also led to new mining claims tied to re-mining historic mine waste, a potential source for potentially 35 out of 60 of the minerals on the 2025 List of Critical Minerals.
The program has also launched the National Mine Waste Inventory, trained states in characterizing minerals in mine waste, and collaborated with NASA on the world's largest airborne hyperspectral survey to examine critical minerals in mine waste as well as undiscovered mineral deposits.
Earth MRI has broader applications beyond mineral development. For example, Earth MRI geophysics data is helping reveal buried fault systems across Arkansas. In California, Earth MRI data is being used to assess potential coproduction of geothermal energy and critical minerals in the Salton Sea, and has revealed previously unknown faults in the San Andreas system. Earth MRI data has also supported Arizona Geological Survey's establishment of a new geologic core repository that has sparked innovative industry partnerships and is being used to train the next generation of economic geologists.
Future of Earth MRI
* * *
2 Hammarstrom, J.M., Kreiner, D.C., Dicken, C.L., and Woodruff, L.G., 2023, National map of focus areas for potential critical mineral resources in the United States: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2023-3007, 4 p., https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20233007
* * *
The USGS is committed to maintaining Earth MRI's collaborative approach moving forward. We continue to rely on the national map of critical mineral potential to prioritize and coordinate with partners as we modernize the nation's geologic mapping, geochemistry, and geophysical survey coverage. In addition to using airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys to identify and map buried mineral deposits, we are allocating funds to a small number of additional types of geophysical studies and tools. As the List of Critical Minerals has expanded, the USGS is actively evaluating areas of the country for further ore deposit research and discovery.
In 2026 and 2027, the USGS plans to advance data delivery and develop new products to make Earth MRI data immediately useful to industry, small businesses, permitting entities, and state, Tribal, and local governments. We also plan to expand artificial intelligence tools that we have piloted in collaboration with the Department of War's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Energy to help a wider range of users interpret Earth MRI results.
Conclusion
As Earth MRI continues to modernize our mapping of the nation's minerals, it is providing insights that are essential for securing our mineral supply chains, strengthening our future economic and national security, and making clear, science-based decisions for responsible resource management. The USGS appreciates the Subcommittee's interest in the Earth MRI program, and looks forward to future collaboration on this important issue.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-WilliamsC-20260625.pdf
Bay Area Ridge Trail Council Executive Director McBride Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Janet McBride, executive director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Bay Area Ridge National Scenic Trail (H.R. 7254):
* * *
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony in strong support of H.R. 7254, a bill to amend the National Trails System Act to direct the Secretary of the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Janet McBride, executive director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Bay Area Ridge National Scenic Trail (H.R. 7254): * * * Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony in strong support of H.R. 7254, a bill to amend the National Trails System Act to direct the Secretary of theInterior to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Bay Area Ridge Trail as a National Scenic Trail.
We express our gratitude to Representative Jared Huffman for introducing this vital legislation, as well as to the co-sponsors from the entire Bay Area congressional delegation, and California Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff for their coordinated leadership.
My name is Janet McBride, and I have had the privilege of serving as the Executive Director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council for the past 20 years. Prior to my time with the Council, I spent nearly a decade managing the regional San Francisco Bay Trail project, giving me 30 consecutive years of dedicated professional experience planning, building, and safeguarding long-distance trails in Northern California.
During my tenure as Executive Director, the Bay Area Ridge Trail has grown by more than 100 dedicated miles, bridging major gaps across complex public and private landscapes. To steward this growing regional asset, we have systematically scaled the institutional capacity of our non-profit organization. Over the last two decades, we have transformed the Council from a small grassroots operation into a highly professionalized, diverse team of 11 full-time staff members who specialize in trail planning, geographical mapping, data management, community advocacy and engagement, and environmental stewardship. This organizational growth ensures that the Council possesses the internal expertise, maturity, and resources necessary to actively assist and collaborate with the Department of the Interior in conducting this feasibility study.
I. Organizational Mission and Vision
The Bay Area Ridge Trail Council was founded in 1987 to carry out a bold and inspiring regional vision. Our formal mission is to plan, promote, and sustain a connected hiking, cycling, and equestrian trail on the ridgelines around San Francisco Bay--linking people, parks, and open space for today and future generations.
Our founding vision traces back to park visionary William Penn Mott, Jr., who served as the 12th Director of the National Park Service, as well as general manager of the East Bay Regional Park District and director of California State Parks. In the 1960s, while looking out over the ridges encircling the San Francisco Bay, Mott envisioned a continuous hill-and-ridge path that would completely loop the metropolitan region, providing close-to-home wilderness immersion for urban communities.
Today, the Council works tirelessly alongside public agencies, land trusts, and community advocates to realize this grand vision piece-by-piece, stitching together a world-class, continuous, 550-mile multi-use ring that represents the ultimate intersection of urban proximity and natural grandeur.
II. The Bay Area Ridge Trail: A Regional & National Treasure
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is an exceptional non-motorized, multi-use pathway designed for hikers, runners, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians.
* Current Scale and Scope: The planned alignment encompasses a 550-mile loop.
Decades of disciplined, grass-roots collaboration have successfully dedicated and opened over 415 miles of the trail to the public.
* Unprecedented Regional Access: The trail physically travels through 9 counties and 24 distinct towns and cities.
* Proximity to Population Centers: It is a crown jewel of accessibility. Over 2.5 million people live within just 2 miles of the Ridge Trail. For a metropolitan area populated by nearly 8 million residents, this trail serves as an immediate, equitable portal to physical health, mental respite, and outdoor recreation.
* Peak Geography: The trail follows the dramatic outer ridgelines of the region, scaling spectacular terrain that includes iconic landmarks such as Mount St. Helena (4,342 feet), Mount Umunhum (3,486 feet), and Monument Peak (2,594 feet), offering sweeping views of the entire Pacific coastline and San Francisco Bay ecosystem.
III. Geography of the Ridge Trail: A Continuous Loop
The planned 550-mile alignment of the Bay Area Ridge Trail forms a continuous loop over the ridgelines that frame the San Francisco Bay Area. Geographically, the trail extends south near the City of Gilroy, traveling upward along the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula. It moves directly through the heart of San Francisco and makes a world-renowned crossing over the Golden Gate. From there, the trail winds northward through the rugged hills of Marin County, crossing into the scenic vistas of Sonoma and Napa counties before reaching its northernmost heights at Calistoga and Mount St. Helena.
The loop then pivots southward, traversing the high ridgelines of the East Bay, crossing the historic Carquinez Strait, and running past the vast East Bay regional ridgelines and wilderness preserves. Finally, it drops back down into the South Bay, passing San Jose to complete this unmatched 550-mile circle of Northern California.
IV. The Intersection of Local and Federal Lands
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is an exceptional non-motorized, multi-use pathway designed for hikers, runners, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians.
* Current Scale and Scope: Decades of disciplined, grass-roots collaboration have successfully dedicated and opened over 415 miles of the trail to the public.
* Regional Access: The trail route travels through 9 counties and 24 distinct towns and cities.
* Proximity to Population Centers: It is a crown jewel of accessibility. Over 2.5 million people live within just 2 miles of the Ridge Trail. For a metropolitan area populated by nearly 8 million residents, this trail serves as an immediate, equitable portal to physical health, mental respite, and outdoor recreation.
* Integration with the National Park System: Highlighting its clear national value, the trail explicitly traverses five prominent federal public land units managed by the federal government:
1. Golden Gate National Recreation Area (including parks in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo)
2. Fort Point National Historic Site
3. John Muir National Historic Site
4. Muir Woods National Monument
5. The Presidio of San Francisco
By stitching these national treasures together with 145 distinct local and state parks, the Ridge Trail forms an invaluable bridge between federal public lands and local communities.
V. A Model of Robust Public-Private Partnership
The success of the Bay Area Ridge Trail is anchored in its network of collaborative relationships. The Council does not act alone; it operates as an essential hub coordinating a vast ecosystem of land managers, community volunteers, and municipal stakeholders.
The Ridge Trail operates and sustains the trail by:
* Partnering with Land Managers: The Council actively partners with over 40 land managers, including local open space districts, municipal parks, land trusts, California State Parks, and federal entities like the National Park Service (including the Golden Gate National Recreation Area).
* Connecting Public Lands: The trail effectively links and weaves together 145 distinct parks and protected public open spaces, creating crucial regional connectivity that benefits both human recreation and wildlife migration corridors.
* Grassroots Stewardship: In 2025 alone, 500 dedicated community volunteers contributed 2,000 hours of hands-on labor side-by-side with our agency partners to design, build, and maintain trail segments.
This deep operational integration ensures that the groundwork for a federal feasibility study is already in place. The data, mapping, stakeholder relationships, and regional leadership required to execute the study are highly mature and ready to be leveraged by the Department of the Interior.
VI. Meeting the Criteria for National Scenic Trail Designation
National Scenic Trails (NST) are extended pathways of exceptional natural beauty and significant national value. Currently, only 11 routes nationwide hold this prestigious distinction.
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is a natural fit to become America's next National Scenic Trail, as it meets or exceeds all federal statutory benchmarks:
1. Extended Route: At a planned 550 miles (with over 415 miles active), it far exceeds the 100-mile long-distance threshold required for national consideration.
2. Ecological and Landform Diversity: The trail provides an unparalleled cross-section of Northern California's natural heritage, traversing diverse ecosystems including ancient redwood forests, unique geological formations, coastal marshes, oak grasslands, riparian rivers, and high-altitude mountain ridgelines.
3. Connectivity to Regional Networks: As detailed in H.R. 7254, the trail seamlessly intersects with other major regional networks, such as the San Francisco Bay Trail, the Napa Valley Vine Trail, and the Coyote Creek Trail, the Juan Bautista de Anaza National Historic Trail, and the East Bay Skyline National Recreation Trail, allowing for expansive, continuous, multi-day trekking and alternative active transportation.
VII. The Critical Importance of the Feasibility Study
Authorizing this study via H.R. 7254 is a necessary, prudent, and non-binding first step. The study will provide a vital framework to:
* Analyze Strategic Gaps: It will bring federal expertise to assist local stakeholders in evaluating how to close the remaining 135 miles of gaps across complex transportation corridors and land interfaces.
* Spur the Outdoor Economy: Formalizing this pathway toward national status will elevate the region's visibility as a world-class recreation destination, providing a powerful economic boost to local businesses and sustainable tourism across Northern California.
* Ensure Local Autonomy: In alignment with standard National Heritage and National Trail study frameworks, this process relies entirely on voluntary collaboration. It creates no new federal regulatory mandates, respects local management, and protects private property rights.
VIII. Congressional Consensus and Advocacy Readiness
A definitive indicator of this legislation's readiness for rapid enactment is the historic level of political consensus surrounding H.R. 7254. Every single one of the 12 members representing the San Francisco Bay Area in the House of Representatives has signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate by California Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.
This alignment did not occur by accident; it is the direct result of months of proactive outreach and liaison work orchestrated by the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, with the support of Representative Huffman. The Council engaged each of the 12 congressional districts individually, presenting comprehensive geographical data and demonstrating how the 550-mile trail network directly enhances the specific communities, open spaces, and local economies within their respective borders.
In a legislative environment where land use, study authorizations, and conservation bills are frequently scrutinized for local friction, H.R. 7254 demonstrates consensus. The fact that the entire 12-member regional delegation is unified behind this effort proves that potential local management questions have already been successfully aligned by the Council.
IX. Broad Land Manager Consensus and Support
Further reinforcing the readiness of this initiative, the Council has conducted extensive, proactive surveys of key land managers, regional stakeholders, and local administrators across the entire 550-mile footprint. This outreach included county governments, municipal leaders, local park authorities, and independent open space districts.
The feedback received has been clear and definitive: there is overwhelming support among these public agencies for the execution of this federal feasibility study. Because the trail intersects a complex mosaic of jurisdictions, demonstrating that local land managers are enthusiastically welcoming this process ensures the Subcommittee that the study will proceed smoothly.
XI. Demonstration of Study Readiness and Practicality
We assure the Subcommittee that the execution of this feasibility study is practical and realistic.
Because the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council has spent nearly four decades as a centralized hub for regional trail planning, managing spatial data, mapping corridors, and coordinating operations with our 40+ land management partners, the federal government will not be starting from scratch.
The foundational data, gap analysis study, and community relationships required to complete this study are highly mature, vetted, and immediately accessible. Furthermore, there is no known local opposition to protecting or evaluating this trail for National Scenic Trail status.
Rather, there is a shared regional anticipation to see this deeply cherished and existing resource evaluated on a national scale.
XII. Conclusion
The Bay Area Ridge Trail represents the convergence of natural beauty, regional volunteerism, urban proximity, and history. It embodies the exact spirit of the National Trails System Act: bringing wilderness experiences into close harmony with where millions of Americans live, work, and play.
A federal feasibility study is a prudent, well-earned, and universally supported next step for this iconic asset. For these reasons, we respectfully urge the Subcommittee on Federal Lands to support and advance H.R. 7254.
Thank you again for your time, consideration, and dedication to expanding public access to America's extraordinary outdoor landscapes.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-McBrideJ-20260701.pdf
* * *
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony in strong support of H.R. 7254, a bill to amend the National Trails System Act to direct the Secretary of the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Janet McBride, executive director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Bay Area Ridge National Scenic Trail (H.R. 7254): * * * Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony in strong support of H.R. 7254, a bill to amend the National Trails System Act to direct the Secretary of theInterior to conduct a study on the feasibility of designating the Bay Area Ridge Trail as a National Scenic Trail.
We express our gratitude to Representative Jared Huffman for introducing this vital legislation, as well as to the co-sponsors from the entire Bay Area congressional delegation, and California Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff for their coordinated leadership.
My name is Janet McBride, and I have had the privilege of serving as the Executive Director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council for the past 20 years. Prior to my time with the Council, I spent nearly a decade managing the regional San Francisco Bay Trail project, giving me 30 consecutive years of dedicated professional experience planning, building, and safeguarding long-distance trails in Northern California.
During my tenure as Executive Director, the Bay Area Ridge Trail has grown by more than 100 dedicated miles, bridging major gaps across complex public and private landscapes. To steward this growing regional asset, we have systematically scaled the institutional capacity of our non-profit organization. Over the last two decades, we have transformed the Council from a small grassroots operation into a highly professionalized, diverse team of 11 full-time staff members who specialize in trail planning, geographical mapping, data management, community advocacy and engagement, and environmental stewardship. This organizational growth ensures that the Council possesses the internal expertise, maturity, and resources necessary to actively assist and collaborate with the Department of the Interior in conducting this feasibility study.
I. Organizational Mission and Vision
The Bay Area Ridge Trail Council was founded in 1987 to carry out a bold and inspiring regional vision. Our formal mission is to plan, promote, and sustain a connected hiking, cycling, and equestrian trail on the ridgelines around San Francisco Bay--linking people, parks, and open space for today and future generations.
Our founding vision traces back to park visionary William Penn Mott, Jr., who served as the 12th Director of the National Park Service, as well as general manager of the East Bay Regional Park District and director of California State Parks. In the 1960s, while looking out over the ridges encircling the San Francisco Bay, Mott envisioned a continuous hill-and-ridge path that would completely loop the metropolitan region, providing close-to-home wilderness immersion for urban communities.
Today, the Council works tirelessly alongside public agencies, land trusts, and community advocates to realize this grand vision piece-by-piece, stitching together a world-class, continuous, 550-mile multi-use ring that represents the ultimate intersection of urban proximity and natural grandeur.
II. The Bay Area Ridge Trail: A Regional & National Treasure
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is an exceptional non-motorized, multi-use pathway designed for hikers, runners, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians.
* Current Scale and Scope: The planned alignment encompasses a 550-mile loop.
Decades of disciplined, grass-roots collaboration have successfully dedicated and opened over 415 miles of the trail to the public.
* Unprecedented Regional Access: The trail physically travels through 9 counties and 24 distinct towns and cities.
* Proximity to Population Centers: It is a crown jewel of accessibility. Over 2.5 million people live within just 2 miles of the Ridge Trail. For a metropolitan area populated by nearly 8 million residents, this trail serves as an immediate, equitable portal to physical health, mental respite, and outdoor recreation.
* Peak Geography: The trail follows the dramatic outer ridgelines of the region, scaling spectacular terrain that includes iconic landmarks such as Mount St. Helena (4,342 feet), Mount Umunhum (3,486 feet), and Monument Peak (2,594 feet), offering sweeping views of the entire Pacific coastline and San Francisco Bay ecosystem.
III. Geography of the Ridge Trail: A Continuous Loop
The planned 550-mile alignment of the Bay Area Ridge Trail forms a continuous loop over the ridgelines that frame the San Francisco Bay Area. Geographically, the trail extends south near the City of Gilroy, traveling upward along the spine of the San Francisco Peninsula. It moves directly through the heart of San Francisco and makes a world-renowned crossing over the Golden Gate. From there, the trail winds northward through the rugged hills of Marin County, crossing into the scenic vistas of Sonoma and Napa counties before reaching its northernmost heights at Calistoga and Mount St. Helena.
The loop then pivots southward, traversing the high ridgelines of the East Bay, crossing the historic Carquinez Strait, and running past the vast East Bay regional ridgelines and wilderness preserves. Finally, it drops back down into the South Bay, passing San Jose to complete this unmatched 550-mile circle of Northern California.
IV. The Intersection of Local and Federal Lands
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is an exceptional non-motorized, multi-use pathway designed for hikers, runners, mountain bicyclists, and equestrians.
* Current Scale and Scope: Decades of disciplined, grass-roots collaboration have successfully dedicated and opened over 415 miles of the trail to the public.
* Regional Access: The trail route travels through 9 counties and 24 distinct towns and cities.
* Proximity to Population Centers: It is a crown jewel of accessibility. Over 2.5 million people live within just 2 miles of the Ridge Trail. For a metropolitan area populated by nearly 8 million residents, this trail serves as an immediate, equitable portal to physical health, mental respite, and outdoor recreation.
* Integration with the National Park System: Highlighting its clear national value, the trail explicitly traverses five prominent federal public land units managed by the federal government:
1. Golden Gate National Recreation Area (including parks in Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo)
2. Fort Point National Historic Site
3. John Muir National Historic Site
4. Muir Woods National Monument
5. The Presidio of San Francisco
By stitching these national treasures together with 145 distinct local and state parks, the Ridge Trail forms an invaluable bridge between federal public lands and local communities.
V. A Model of Robust Public-Private Partnership
The success of the Bay Area Ridge Trail is anchored in its network of collaborative relationships. The Council does not act alone; it operates as an essential hub coordinating a vast ecosystem of land managers, community volunteers, and municipal stakeholders.
The Ridge Trail operates and sustains the trail by:
* Partnering with Land Managers: The Council actively partners with over 40 land managers, including local open space districts, municipal parks, land trusts, California State Parks, and federal entities like the National Park Service (including the Golden Gate National Recreation Area).
* Connecting Public Lands: The trail effectively links and weaves together 145 distinct parks and protected public open spaces, creating crucial regional connectivity that benefits both human recreation and wildlife migration corridors.
* Grassroots Stewardship: In 2025 alone, 500 dedicated community volunteers contributed 2,000 hours of hands-on labor side-by-side with our agency partners to design, build, and maintain trail segments.
This deep operational integration ensures that the groundwork for a federal feasibility study is already in place. The data, mapping, stakeholder relationships, and regional leadership required to execute the study are highly mature and ready to be leveraged by the Department of the Interior.
VI. Meeting the Criteria for National Scenic Trail Designation
National Scenic Trails (NST) are extended pathways of exceptional natural beauty and significant national value. Currently, only 11 routes nationwide hold this prestigious distinction.
The Bay Area Ridge Trail is a natural fit to become America's next National Scenic Trail, as it meets or exceeds all federal statutory benchmarks:
1. Extended Route: At a planned 550 miles (with over 415 miles active), it far exceeds the 100-mile long-distance threshold required for national consideration.
2. Ecological and Landform Diversity: The trail provides an unparalleled cross-section of Northern California's natural heritage, traversing diverse ecosystems including ancient redwood forests, unique geological formations, coastal marshes, oak grasslands, riparian rivers, and high-altitude mountain ridgelines.
3. Connectivity to Regional Networks: As detailed in H.R. 7254, the trail seamlessly intersects with other major regional networks, such as the San Francisco Bay Trail, the Napa Valley Vine Trail, and the Coyote Creek Trail, the Juan Bautista de Anaza National Historic Trail, and the East Bay Skyline National Recreation Trail, allowing for expansive, continuous, multi-day trekking and alternative active transportation.
VII. The Critical Importance of the Feasibility Study
Authorizing this study via H.R. 7254 is a necessary, prudent, and non-binding first step. The study will provide a vital framework to:
* Analyze Strategic Gaps: It will bring federal expertise to assist local stakeholders in evaluating how to close the remaining 135 miles of gaps across complex transportation corridors and land interfaces.
* Spur the Outdoor Economy: Formalizing this pathway toward national status will elevate the region's visibility as a world-class recreation destination, providing a powerful economic boost to local businesses and sustainable tourism across Northern California.
* Ensure Local Autonomy: In alignment with standard National Heritage and National Trail study frameworks, this process relies entirely on voluntary collaboration. It creates no new federal regulatory mandates, respects local management, and protects private property rights.
VIII. Congressional Consensus and Advocacy Readiness
A definitive indicator of this legislation's readiness for rapid enactment is the historic level of political consensus surrounding H.R. 7254. Every single one of the 12 members representing the San Francisco Bay Area in the House of Representatives has signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate by California Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.
This alignment did not occur by accident; it is the direct result of months of proactive outreach and liaison work orchestrated by the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, with the support of Representative Huffman. The Council engaged each of the 12 congressional districts individually, presenting comprehensive geographical data and demonstrating how the 550-mile trail network directly enhances the specific communities, open spaces, and local economies within their respective borders.
In a legislative environment where land use, study authorizations, and conservation bills are frequently scrutinized for local friction, H.R. 7254 demonstrates consensus. The fact that the entire 12-member regional delegation is unified behind this effort proves that potential local management questions have already been successfully aligned by the Council.
IX. Broad Land Manager Consensus and Support
Further reinforcing the readiness of this initiative, the Council has conducted extensive, proactive surveys of key land managers, regional stakeholders, and local administrators across the entire 550-mile footprint. This outreach included county governments, municipal leaders, local park authorities, and independent open space districts.
The feedback received has been clear and definitive: there is overwhelming support among these public agencies for the execution of this federal feasibility study. Because the trail intersects a complex mosaic of jurisdictions, demonstrating that local land managers are enthusiastically welcoming this process ensures the Subcommittee that the study will proceed smoothly.
XI. Demonstration of Study Readiness and Practicality
We assure the Subcommittee that the execution of this feasibility study is practical and realistic.
Because the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council has spent nearly four decades as a centralized hub for regional trail planning, managing spatial data, mapping corridors, and coordinating operations with our 40+ land management partners, the federal government will not be starting from scratch.
The foundational data, gap analysis study, and community relationships required to complete this study are highly mature, vetted, and immediately accessible. Furthermore, there is no known local opposition to protecting or evaluating this trail for National Scenic Trail status.
Rather, there is a shared regional anticipation to see this deeply cherished and existing resource evaluated on a national scale.
XII. Conclusion
The Bay Area Ridge Trail represents the convergence of natural beauty, regional volunteerism, urban proximity, and history. It embodies the exact spirit of the National Trails System Act: bringing wilderness experiences into close harmony with where millions of Americans live, work, and play.
A federal feasibility study is a prudent, well-earned, and universally supported next step for this iconic asset. For these reasons, we respectfully urge the Subcommittee on Federal Lands to support and advance H.R. 7254.
Thank you again for your time, consideration, and dedication to expanding public access to America's extraordinary outdoor landscapes.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-McBrideJ-20260701.pdf
Oklahoma State Geologist Hayman Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Nicholas Hayman, Oklahoma state geologist and president-elect of the Association of American State Geologists, Norman, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative.
* * *
Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Nicholas Hayman, Oklahoma state geologist and president-elect of the Association of American State Geologists, Norman, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Mapping Resources Initiative,commonly known as Earth MRI.
I appear before you today as Oklahoma State Geologist and as President-Elect of the Association of American State Geologists (AASG). AASG represents the geological surveys of the states and territories and has served for more than a century as the principal forum through which state geological surveys coordinate with one another and with our federal partners. While the structure and responsibilities of state surveys vary considerably across the country, our mission is remarkably consistent: to provide objective geoscientific information that supports responsible resource development, environmental stewardship, hazard mitigation, infrastructure planning, and economic growth.
Throughout my career in academia, federal service, and state government, I have worked on issues related to energy resources, mineral resources, geologic mapping, and scientific infrastructure. From that perspective, I believe Earth MRI is one of the most effective federal state partnership programs currently operating within the federal government and one that merits reauthorization and continued support by Congress.
The United States has long recognized that investments in geologic information serve a broader public purpose. From the earliest federal surveys of the American West through modern efforts to characterize groundwater resources, energy systems, mineral deposits, and geologic hazards, public investments in earth science have consistently produced benefits that extend far beyond the scientific community. Geologic information reduces uncertainty, supports economic development, informs land-use decisions, improves public safety, and enables private investment.
Earth MRI should be viewed within this longstanding tradition. While the program is frequently discussed in the context of critical minerals, its significance is much broader. At its core, Earth MRI is an investment in knowledge. It seeks to improve the nation's understanding of its geologic foundation through modern mapping, geophysical surveys, geochemical analyses, and data preservation efforts. In doing so, it provides the information necessary for governments, businesses, and communities to make informed decisions about the resources beneath our feet.
The need for such information has become increasingly apparent. Over the past several decades, the United States has become increasingly dependent upon foreign sources for many minerals essential to modern manufacturing, energy technologies, advanced electronics, and national defense. At the same time, large portions of the country remain under-mapped using modern scientific methods. Policymakers are therefore confronted with an unusual challenge: the desire to strengthen domestic supply chains and resource security while lacking complete information about the nation's own resource potential.
Before resources can be developed, they must first be understood. Before private capital can be invested, exploration risk must be reduced. Before permitting decisions can be streamlined, decision-makers must understand the geology that underlies those decisions. Earth MRI addresses this challenge by providing the foundational information upon which subsequent public and private decisions depend.
One of the most important characteristics of Earth MRI is that it operates in what economists often describe as the pre-competitive space. The program does not subsidize individual companies, select preferred projects, or direct investment toward particular outcomes. Instead, it generates publicly available scientific information that benefits all users equally. The geologic maps, geophysical surveys, geochemical analyses, and preserved data generated through Earth MRI become part of the permanent scientific record and are available to federal agencies, state governments, tribal nations, universities, private industry, and the public.
This distinction is important because information functions differently than many other forms of public investment. A geologic map may be used by a mineral exploration company, a groundwater manager, a transportation agency, an energy developer, a local government, or a university researcher. Airborne geophysical surveys collected today may continue to generate value decades into the future as analytical technologies improve and new questions emerge. In many cases, the value of these datasets increases over time.
For that reason, Earth MRI should not be viewed solely as a critical minerals program. It is fundamentally an investment in the nation's geologic knowledge base. The same information that helps identify critical minerals may later support geothermal development, groundwater management, infrastructure planning, environmental remediation, carbon storage assessments, or hazard mitigation. The benefits are broad, long-lasting, and often impossible to fully predict at the time the information is collected.
Since its establishment in 2019, Earth MRI has demonstrated the value of this approach. Through Fiscal Year 2025, approximately $78.6 million has been distributed directly to state geological surveys, supporting activities in forty states and Puerto Rico. Collectively, Earth MRI has generated new geologic mapping, airborne geophysics, geochemical investigations, mine waste assessments, and data preservation efforts across nearly every region of the country. At least one category of Earth MRI data has now been collected in forty-six states and Puerto Rico, with additional participation anticipated in Fiscal Year 2026.
Equally important, the program has demonstrated that relatively modest federal investments can generate substantial returns. Approximately forty to forty-five percent of annual Earth MRI funding supports airborne geophysical surveys, much of which is executed by private-sector contractors. As a result, Earth MRI not only generates information but also supports American businesses and technical expertise. In several states, federal investments have also encouraged additional state investments, creating a multiplier effect that expands the program's reach and impact.
A defining feature of Earth MRI is its partnership model. The success of the program is due in large part to the close collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey and state geological surveys. State surveys occupy a unique position within the nation's scientific infrastructure. We maintain geologic maps and databases, preserve core repositories, assess natural resources, support hazard mitigation efforts, and provide technical assistance to government agencies, industry, landowners, and citizens.
Because surveys are embedded within their respective states, they possess a level of local knowledge and institutional continuity that cannot easily be replicated through federal programs alone. Survey scientists understand regional geology, resource potential, land ownership patterns, regulatory environments, and stakeholder concerns. They maintain long-standing relationships with universities, tribal governments, state agencies, local governments, and private industry.
Earth MRI effectively combines these local capabilities with federal leadership and national priorities. Rather than creating a new federal structure, the program builds upon existing expertise and institutions. This approach has enabled projects to be implemented efficiently while ensuring that resulting data products are scientifically rigorous and locally relevant.
The benefits extend beyond the immediate project outcomes. Earth MRI has strengthened scientific and technical capacity throughout the country. In Michigan, partnerships supported through Earth MRI contributed to substantial growth in survey staffing and the establishment of a dedicated minerals program in a state with globally significant mineral resources. In Wyoming, federal investments have complemented substantial state investments in airborne geophysics, creating a model for collaborative resource assessment. In Oklahoma, Earth MRI has enabled new investigations into critical minerals, mine waste resources, and emerging energy opportunities while supporting the adoption of advanced analytical technologies and new scientific partnerships.
These examples are important because they illustrate that Earth MRI is not simply producing maps and datasets. It is strengthening the nation's capacity to understand and manage its natural resources. New personnel, improved laboratories, expanded datasets, and strengthened partnerships remain in place long after individual projects have concluded. The cumulative effect is a stronger national geoscience enterprise capable of supporting future economic development and resource security.
Earth MRI has also proven valuable in facilitating collaboration among federal agencies, states, tribes, universities, and private-sector partners. In Oklahoma, for example, Earth MRI has supported cooperative efforts involving the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Quapaw Nation, and industry partners to evaluate historic lead-zinc mining districts and assess opportunities for recovering valuable materials from legacy mine waste. These efforts have the potential to advance resource recovery, environmental stewardship, and economic revitalization simultaneously.
The program's flexibility is one of its greatest strengths. Although originally established to improve understanding of critical mineral resources, Earth MRI data are increasingly supporting geothermal resource assessments, hydrogen exploration, groundwater investigations, infrastructure planning, carbon management initiatives, and other emerging national priorities.
The information generated through the program is often applicable to multiple sectors and multiple generations of users.
The case for reauthorization is therefore straightforward. Significant portions of the country remain incompletely mapped using modern techniques. Important geophysical and geochemical datasets have yet to be collected. Opportunities remain to expand resource assessments, improve data preservation efforts, strengthen state survey capabilities, and support emerging energy and mineral priorities. The work is far from complete.
Reauthorization would provide continuity for federal and state partners while preserving the momentum that has been established over the past seven years. It would allow the nation to continue building the geologic knowledge necessary to support domestic resource development, energy security, economic competitiveness, and informed decision-making. Just as importantly, it would preserve and strengthen a federal-state partnership model that has proven both effective and efficient.
Earth MRI is fully consistent with the nation's current priorities. It supports domestic resource development, strengthens supply-chain resilience, improves understanding of critical minerals and energy resources, informs permitting decisions, and promotes economic growth. It does so not through subsidies or mandates, but through the creation of high-quality scientific information that benefits all users.
The United States cannot responsibly develop resources it does not understand. Earth MRI helps provide that understanding. For that reason, the Association of American State Geologists strongly supports reauthorization of the program and continued congressional investment in the geologic information necessary to support the nation's future prosperity, security, and resilience.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be pleased to answer any questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-HaymanN-20260625.pdf
* * *
Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following testimony by Nicholas Hayman, Oklahoma state geologist and president-elect of the Association of American State Geologists, Norman, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee: Thank you for the opportunity to testify regarding the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Mapping Resources Initiative,commonly known as Earth MRI.
I appear before you today as Oklahoma State Geologist and as President-Elect of the Association of American State Geologists (AASG). AASG represents the geological surveys of the states and territories and has served for more than a century as the principal forum through which state geological surveys coordinate with one another and with our federal partners. While the structure and responsibilities of state surveys vary considerably across the country, our mission is remarkably consistent: to provide objective geoscientific information that supports responsible resource development, environmental stewardship, hazard mitigation, infrastructure planning, and economic growth.
Throughout my career in academia, federal service, and state government, I have worked on issues related to energy resources, mineral resources, geologic mapping, and scientific infrastructure. From that perspective, I believe Earth MRI is one of the most effective federal state partnership programs currently operating within the federal government and one that merits reauthorization and continued support by Congress.
The United States has long recognized that investments in geologic information serve a broader public purpose. From the earliest federal surveys of the American West through modern efforts to characterize groundwater resources, energy systems, mineral deposits, and geologic hazards, public investments in earth science have consistently produced benefits that extend far beyond the scientific community. Geologic information reduces uncertainty, supports economic development, informs land-use decisions, improves public safety, and enables private investment.
Earth MRI should be viewed within this longstanding tradition. While the program is frequently discussed in the context of critical minerals, its significance is much broader. At its core, Earth MRI is an investment in knowledge. It seeks to improve the nation's understanding of its geologic foundation through modern mapping, geophysical surveys, geochemical analyses, and data preservation efforts. In doing so, it provides the information necessary for governments, businesses, and communities to make informed decisions about the resources beneath our feet.
The need for such information has become increasingly apparent. Over the past several decades, the United States has become increasingly dependent upon foreign sources for many minerals essential to modern manufacturing, energy technologies, advanced electronics, and national defense. At the same time, large portions of the country remain under-mapped using modern scientific methods. Policymakers are therefore confronted with an unusual challenge: the desire to strengthen domestic supply chains and resource security while lacking complete information about the nation's own resource potential.
Before resources can be developed, they must first be understood. Before private capital can be invested, exploration risk must be reduced. Before permitting decisions can be streamlined, decision-makers must understand the geology that underlies those decisions. Earth MRI addresses this challenge by providing the foundational information upon which subsequent public and private decisions depend.
One of the most important characteristics of Earth MRI is that it operates in what economists often describe as the pre-competitive space. The program does not subsidize individual companies, select preferred projects, or direct investment toward particular outcomes. Instead, it generates publicly available scientific information that benefits all users equally. The geologic maps, geophysical surveys, geochemical analyses, and preserved data generated through Earth MRI become part of the permanent scientific record and are available to federal agencies, state governments, tribal nations, universities, private industry, and the public.
This distinction is important because information functions differently than many other forms of public investment. A geologic map may be used by a mineral exploration company, a groundwater manager, a transportation agency, an energy developer, a local government, or a university researcher. Airborne geophysical surveys collected today may continue to generate value decades into the future as analytical technologies improve and new questions emerge. In many cases, the value of these datasets increases over time.
For that reason, Earth MRI should not be viewed solely as a critical minerals program. It is fundamentally an investment in the nation's geologic knowledge base. The same information that helps identify critical minerals may later support geothermal development, groundwater management, infrastructure planning, environmental remediation, carbon storage assessments, or hazard mitigation. The benefits are broad, long-lasting, and often impossible to fully predict at the time the information is collected.
Since its establishment in 2019, Earth MRI has demonstrated the value of this approach. Through Fiscal Year 2025, approximately $78.6 million has been distributed directly to state geological surveys, supporting activities in forty states and Puerto Rico. Collectively, Earth MRI has generated new geologic mapping, airborne geophysics, geochemical investigations, mine waste assessments, and data preservation efforts across nearly every region of the country. At least one category of Earth MRI data has now been collected in forty-six states and Puerto Rico, with additional participation anticipated in Fiscal Year 2026.
Equally important, the program has demonstrated that relatively modest federal investments can generate substantial returns. Approximately forty to forty-five percent of annual Earth MRI funding supports airborne geophysical surveys, much of which is executed by private-sector contractors. As a result, Earth MRI not only generates information but also supports American businesses and technical expertise. In several states, federal investments have also encouraged additional state investments, creating a multiplier effect that expands the program's reach and impact.
A defining feature of Earth MRI is its partnership model. The success of the program is due in large part to the close collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey and state geological surveys. State surveys occupy a unique position within the nation's scientific infrastructure. We maintain geologic maps and databases, preserve core repositories, assess natural resources, support hazard mitigation efforts, and provide technical assistance to government agencies, industry, landowners, and citizens.
Because surveys are embedded within their respective states, they possess a level of local knowledge and institutional continuity that cannot easily be replicated through federal programs alone. Survey scientists understand regional geology, resource potential, land ownership patterns, regulatory environments, and stakeholder concerns. They maintain long-standing relationships with universities, tribal governments, state agencies, local governments, and private industry.
Earth MRI effectively combines these local capabilities with federal leadership and national priorities. Rather than creating a new federal structure, the program builds upon existing expertise and institutions. This approach has enabled projects to be implemented efficiently while ensuring that resulting data products are scientifically rigorous and locally relevant.
The benefits extend beyond the immediate project outcomes. Earth MRI has strengthened scientific and technical capacity throughout the country. In Michigan, partnerships supported through Earth MRI contributed to substantial growth in survey staffing and the establishment of a dedicated minerals program in a state with globally significant mineral resources. In Wyoming, federal investments have complemented substantial state investments in airborne geophysics, creating a model for collaborative resource assessment. In Oklahoma, Earth MRI has enabled new investigations into critical minerals, mine waste resources, and emerging energy opportunities while supporting the adoption of advanced analytical technologies and new scientific partnerships.
These examples are important because they illustrate that Earth MRI is not simply producing maps and datasets. It is strengthening the nation's capacity to understand and manage its natural resources. New personnel, improved laboratories, expanded datasets, and strengthened partnerships remain in place long after individual projects have concluded. The cumulative effect is a stronger national geoscience enterprise capable of supporting future economic development and resource security.
Earth MRI has also proven valuable in facilitating collaboration among federal agencies, states, tribes, universities, and private-sector partners. In Oklahoma, for example, Earth MRI has supported cooperative efforts involving the Oklahoma Geological Survey, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Quapaw Nation, and industry partners to evaluate historic lead-zinc mining districts and assess opportunities for recovering valuable materials from legacy mine waste. These efforts have the potential to advance resource recovery, environmental stewardship, and economic revitalization simultaneously.
The program's flexibility is one of its greatest strengths. Although originally established to improve understanding of critical mineral resources, Earth MRI data are increasingly supporting geothermal resource assessments, hydrogen exploration, groundwater investigations, infrastructure planning, carbon management initiatives, and other emerging national priorities.
The information generated through the program is often applicable to multiple sectors and multiple generations of users.
The case for reauthorization is therefore straightforward. Significant portions of the country remain incompletely mapped using modern techniques. Important geophysical and geochemical datasets have yet to be collected. Opportunities remain to expand resource assessments, improve data preservation efforts, strengthen state survey capabilities, and support emerging energy and mineral priorities. The work is far from complete.
Reauthorization would provide continuity for federal and state partners while preserving the momentum that has been established over the past seven years. It would allow the nation to continue building the geologic knowledge necessary to support domestic resource development, energy security, economic competitiveness, and informed decision-making. Just as importantly, it would preserve and strengthen a federal-state partnership model that has proven both effective and efficient.
Earth MRI is fully consistent with the nation's current priorities. It supports domestic resource development, strengthens supply-chain resilience, improves understanding of critical minerals and energy resources, informs permitting decisions, and promotes economic growth. It does so not through subsidies or mandates, but through the creation of high-quality scientific information that benefits all users.
The United States cannot responsibly develop resources it does not understand. Earth MRI helps provide that understanding. For that reason, the Association of American State Geologists strongly supports reauthorization of the program and continued congressional investment in the geologic information necessary to support the nation's future prosperity, security, and resilience.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I would be pleased to answer any questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-HaymanN-20260625.pdf
Advancing American Freedom Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise Senior Research Fellow Greszler Testifies Before House Oversight Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Rachel U. Greszler, senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
* * *
My name is Rachel Greszler. I am a senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom. The views I express in this testimony ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Rachel U. Greszler, senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. * * * My name is Rachel Greszler. I am a senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom. The views I express in this testimonyare my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of Advancing American Freedom.
In my testimony today, I will briefly review improper payments, examine recent trends in the SNAP program, and propose four ways that policymakers can reduce waste, fraud, and abuse by requiring radical transparency and meaningful accountability for taxpayers' dollars.
Improper Payments are Enormous
According to its own measures, the federal government issued $184 billion in improper payments in 2025.
1 At about $1,400 per household, this equals more than the average household spends on gas and groceries over eight weeks.2 Such high levels of improper payments stem from the sheer magnitude of government transfers--totaling $4.2 trillion in 2025, or the equivalent of $31,400 per household--and a blatant lack of accountability. Instead of being penalized, programs with high improper payment rates are typically rewarded with bigger budgets.
* * *
1 PaymentAccuracy.gov. (accessed February 13, 2026). All improper payments included in this report equal "improper and unknown" payments and rates as reported on PaymentAccuracy.gov, minus all Department of War wage and travel compensation payments. These payments are netted out for consistency as no other departments report improper payments related to employee compensation or travel expenses.
2 BLS, "Consumer Expenditures, 2024," December 19, 2025, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf (accessed February 23, 2026).
2
Improper payments waste taxpayer dollars and threaten the ongoing viability of programs for those who need them. For example, some very large federal programs--like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)--regularly spend up to $1 out of every $3 dollars on improper payments. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's (SNAP) $10.2 billion in reported improper payments is enough to cover annual grocery costs for 1.6 million households, and $97 billion in government health insurance programs' improper payments is enough to provide health insurance to 3.6 million families or 10.4 million individuals.3
Improper Payments Are Undercounted and Exclude Most Fraud and Abuse
What the government reports in improper payments is almost certainly a significant understatement. The federal government only tracks improper payments in some of its programs, and in those it tracks, it misses many improper payments. For example, Brian Blase and I estimated that if the Biden and Obama Administrations had not excluded eligibility checks from states' Medicaid audits, auditors would have found two times the amount of improper Medicaid payments over the past decade--nearly $1.1 trillion instead of the $543 billion Medicaid reported.4 3
Ibid, PaymentAccuracy.gov, and Kaiser Family Foundation, "2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey," October 22, 2025, https://www.kff.org/health-costs/2025-employer-health-benefits-survey/ (accessed February 23, 2026).
4 Brian Blase and Rachel Greszler, "Medicaid's True Improper Payments Double Those Reported," Economic Policy Innovation Center and Paragon Health Institute, March 3, 2025, https://epicforamerica.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/02/Medicaids_True_Improper_Payments_FOR-RELEASE_V3.pdf (accessed January 29, 2026).
3
Since eligibility is the primary source of improper payments, failing to check eligibility can enable rampant fraud. The magnitude of fraud recently discovered in Minnesota and elsewhere shows just how little of all fraud is actually known. In the eight years between 2017 and 2024, the entire federal government reported just $51.9 billion--an average of $6.5 billion per year--in "known fraud" across the entire United States.5 Yet, over the past year, federal prosecutors uncovered an alleged $9 billion or more that may have been stolen from Minnesota-run Medicaid programs alone since 2018.6
Despite the government's improper payment reports documenting less than $7 billion per year in "known fraud," the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.7 At the upper end, that is equivalent to nearly two months of housing payments for every household in America.8 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)--also known as food stamps--is a federally funded and state-administered program that first began in 1964.
9 As a need-based welfare
program, SNAP benefits should rise and fall with the poverty rate and unemployment rate, but both the number of SNAP recipients and the amount of SNAP spending have exploded since 2008.
From 1974 to 2008, an average of 8.3 percent of the population was on SNAP and the poverty rate averaged 13.0 percent.10 From 2008 to 2024, the percentage of the population on SNAP jumped to 12.8 percent even as the average poverty rate ticked down to 12.9 percent.11
5 PaymentAccuracy.gov (accessed January 31, 2025).
6 Alyssa Chen and Michelle Griffith, "U.S. Attorney: Fraud likely exceeds $9 billion in Minnesota-run Medicaid services," Minnesota Reformer, December 18, 2025, https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/12/18/u-s-attorney-fraud-likelyexceeds-9-billion-in-minnesota-run-medicaid-services/ (accessed February 17, 2026).
7 GAO, "Fraud Risk Management: 2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud, Based on Various Risk Environments," GAO-24-105833, April 16, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833 (accessed February 25, 2026).
8 BLS, "Consumer Expenditures, 2024."
9 While states do not fund the benefits, they pay 50 percent of SNAP administrative costs. In recent years, administrative costs have totaled $6.6 billion, or about seven percent of SNAP benefits
10 USDA, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs," Food and Nutrition Administration, June 12, 2026, https://fna-bwbufwdzbabpezgc.z01.azurefd.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-annualsummary-6.pdf (accessed June 22, 2026), and U.S. Census Bureau, "Table A-3. Poverty Status of People by Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin Using the Official Poverty Measure: 1959 to 2024," https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60287.html (accessed June 15, 2026).
11 Ibid.
4
The U.S. spent more on SNAP benefits in 2025 ($102 billion) when the unemployment rate averaged 4.3 percent than it did in 2011 ($68 billion) when the unemployment rate averaged 9.6 percent.12 This rise in SNAP spending stems from increased benefit amounts, expanded interpretations of Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE), and a roughly five-fold increase in improper payments.13
12 BLS, "Unemployment Rate," https://www.bls.gov/data/home.htm#employment (accessed February 13, 2026), and USDA, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Cost," https://fnsprod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-annualsummary-1.pdf (accessed February 13, 2026).
13 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
5
Last year, the SNAP program's improper payment rate was 10.9 percent. While data is missing for a handful of recent years (2016, 2017, 2021, and 2022), SNAP's improper payment rate jumped from an average of 4.8 percent between 2004 and 2015 to 11.4 percent between 2023 and 2025.
14
Improper payment rates in SNAP vary significantly by state, from a low of 3.3 percent in South Dakota to a high of 24.7 percent in Alaska in fiscal year 2024.15
The SNAP program's measure of improper payments through its quality control system is arguably well-designed to assess the accuracy of eligibility and benefit levels. If followed correctly, the reviews include statistically significant samples, independent reviewers, household interviews, third-party verification (such as state or Social Security wage records), and a federal review of select state-level reviews. The problem, however, is that the quality control only measures if the households that received benefits were eligible for benefits, and if they received the correct benefit amount under SNAP rules. Notably, the quality control process limits or excludes reviews of individuals who qualify based on states' expansions of SNAP eligibility (see section below on BBCE). The improper payments measure also does not include any of the fraud that occurs after SNAP benefits are delivered to households.
14 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
15 USDA, Food and Nutrition Service, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Payment Error Rates Fiscal Year 2024,"
June 30, 2025, https://fna-bwbufwdzbabpezgc.z01.azurefd.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-fy24QC-PER.pdf (accessed June 22, 2026).
6
Much of SNAP Fraud Occurs After Benefits Are Distributed
While SNAP's improper payment rates based on eligibility and payment levels alone are already unacceptably high, much of the fraud that occurs in SNAP happens after benefits are distributed to households. The significant increase in SNAP spending despite relatively low poverty and unemployment rates appears to have incentivized increased fraud on multiple fronts. First, roughly $95 billion in annual SNAP spending is a high-value target for criminals to steal SNAP benefits, such as by installing skimming devices on retailers' card readers. Second, when states use BBCE to extend benefits to households that are not in poverty, the value of SNAP benefits is reduced and recipients are more likely to engage in fraud, such as by exchanging SNAP benefits for a discounted cash payout or colluding with retailers to use SNAP benefits on ineligible products.
Trump Administration Is Combating Fraud, but Faces Resistance
The Trump Administration has taken unprecedented steps to reduce waste and abuse in government programs, crack down on fraud, and provide unparalleled transparency.16 Among many actions, this includes President Trump issuing Executive Order 14243, "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,"17 and Executive Order 14395, "Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud."18
The Trump Administration's efforts also include notable steps by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate and prosecute fraud in the SNAP program.
19 In addition to
going after fraudulent use of SNAP benefits, the USDA is also trying to prevent fraudulent receipt of SNAP benefits. This includes the USDA requesting information from states on SNAP recipients so that the federal government--which pays 100 percent of SNAP benefits--can conduct nationwide program integrity measures.20 Such comprehensive reviews are necessary because, for example, state reviews cannot flag if an individual who claims benefits in their state has simultaneously claimed benefits in another state or in another 20 states.
To date, 21 states and the District of Columbia have resisted or challenged the USDA's request for information. The federal government should not fund programs that it cannot manage. If the courts 16See, for example: DOGE HHS, "Today the HHS DOGE team open sourced the largest Medicaid dataset in department history..," X, February 13, 2026, https://x.com/DOGE_HHS/status/2022370909211021376 (accessed February 18, 2026); The White House, "Here's What the Trump Administration Is Doing to Crush Minnesota's Fraud Epidemic," January 2, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/01/heres-what-the-trump-administration-is-doingto-crushminnesotas-fraud-epidemic/ (accessed February 18, 2026).
17 Exec. Order No. 14243, "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos," 90 FR 13861, March 20, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/25/2025-05214/stopping-waste-fraud-and-abuse-byeliminating-information-silos (accessed June 21, 2026).
18 Exec. Order No. 14395, "Establishing the Task Force To Eliminate Fraud," 91 FR 13485, March 16, 2026, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/19/2026-05497/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminatefraud#page- (accessed June 21, 2026).
19 USDA Food and Nutrition Administration, "USDA and Ohio Team Up to Shut Down Snap Fraud," June 5, 2026, https://www.fna.usda.gov/newsroom/fna-0002.26 (accessed June 21, 2026).
20 USDA, "Secretary Rollins Requires States to Provide Records on SNAP Benefits, Ensure Lawful Use of Federal Funds," Press Release, May 6, 2025, https://www.fna.usda.gov/newsroom/usda-0101.25 (accessed June 21, 2026).
7
rule that the states do not have to comply with requests that the Administration believes are necessary to protect the integrity of taxpayers' dollars, Congress should consider either devolving the SNAP program to the states or bringing SNAP administration within the USDA.
H.R. 1 Will Significantly Reduce Improper Payments in SNAP
Imposing new accountability on SNAP payments
was one of the great achievements of H.R. 1, the
One Big Beautiful Bill. Beginning in 2028, states
with improper payment rates or payment error rates
over six percent will be required to pay between
five percent and 15 percent of their SNAP
benefits.21 The Congressional Budget Office
estimated that these improper payment cost-sharing
provisions will save $68.8 billion over 10 years.22
To ensure the intent of this provision and to prevent states from undercounting their error rates, Congress and the Administration must require consistent and valid quality control estimates that include full eligibility checks of all sampled households, including those who qualify under BBCE.
H.R. 1's SNAP accountability provisions will go a long way to save taxpayer dollars and protect the integrity of the program. These measures--requiring states to pay for most or all of their improper payments--should be extended to other federal transfer programs.
How Congress Can Reduce Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP and Other Federal Programs At a basic level, reducing waste, fraud, and improper payments requires front-end verification and back-end accountability. That must begin with better accounting of federal benefits--tracking payments from beginning to end--and include consequences for irresponsible actions. State governments and other entities that receive and distribute federal funds must be accountable to the federal government, and the federal government must be accountable to the taxpayers whose money it takes.
The current Congress has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation that would all work towards reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in SNAP and other federal programs. Some of these proposals--the overwhelming majority of which have passed the House--include:
- H.R. 8028, the SNAP Fraud Reporting Act of 2026 (S.4716)
21 States with improper payment rates between 6.0 percent and 7.99 percent must pay for 5 percent of their SNAP benefits; states with payment error rates between 8.0 percent and 9.99 percent must pay 10 percent; and states with payment error rates of 10 percent or higher must pay for 15 percent of their SNAP benefits. Public Law 119-21 (2025), https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text.
22 CBO, "Estimated Budgetary Effects of Public Law 119-21, to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Title II of H. Con.
Res. 14, Relative to CBO's January 2025 Baseline," July 21, 2025, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61570 (accessed June 18, 2026).
Improper Payment
Rate
State Share of SNAP
Benefit Costs
Under 6.0% 0%
6.0% - 7.99% 5%
8.0% - 9.99% 10%
10% and over 15%
Cost Sharing for SNAP Improper Payments
8
- H.R. 7567, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026
- H.R. 7658, the Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act
- H.R. 3887, the SNAP Anti-Theft and Victim Compensation Act of 2025
- H.R. 416, the No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025** (see Proposal 2 below)
- H.R. 762, the Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act (S. 302)
- H.R. 8464, the Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act
- H.R. 8463, the Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act
- H.R. 8312, the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act
- H.R. 8467, the Zeroing Out Monetary Benefits Improperly Expended Act
- H.R. 8107, the Government Audit and Accountability of Federally Funded StateAdministered Programs Act of 2025 - H.R. 6916, Program Integrity and Fraud Prevention Act of 2025
- H.R. 428, the Bonuses for Cost-Cutters and Fraud Preventers Act
- H.R. 1755, the Timely and Accurate Benefits Act of 2025
- H.R. 8872, the Preventing Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in TANF Act
Many of these proposals are in line with four major reforms that I propose:
1. Follow the Money: Account for Federal Payments as Thoroughly as Taxes Collected The first step in preventing fraud is understanding how it happens, which requires the federal government to be able to follow the money it spends as closely as it follows the money it collects.
In 2025, the federal government collected $4.4 trillion in income and payroll taxes and distributed $4.2 trillion in federal transfer payments. While the IRS requires taxpayers to account for every dollar they earn, not nearly enough accountability is required when the federal government redistributes over $4 trillion of the taxes it collects as transfer payments to others. The enormity of federal transfer payments combined with little accountability makes federal taxpayer dollars a high-value target for fraud, waste, and abuse.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.
23 Yet the federal government reported an
average of just $6.5 billion annually in "known fraud" over the past eight years.24 Until the federal government knows where the money it spends goes, it cannot reduce fraud and improper payments.
As a first step, Congress should require the same level of reporting and auditing of tax-takers as it does of taxpayers. This would include creating two new 1099 categories for safety net benefit recipients and providers. The provider, or distributor, of the federal funds would receive a 1099-P from the federal government (or subsequently from the state government or other intermediary) 23 GAO, "Fraud Risk Management: 2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud, Based on Various Risk Environments," GAO-24-105833, April 16, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833 (accessed June 21, 2026).
24 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
9
and would be responsible for sending recipients an annual summary of benefits on a 1099-BR form. Every benefit recipient and provider would be required to file their taxes with the forms, which should provide a nearly complete accounting of federal safety net funds.
Once a proper accounting of payments is established, Congress can consider penalties for providers' failure to properly report and disburse the taxpayer dollars they receive, similar to the penalties that apply to taxpayers who fail to properly report and pay taxes on the income they earn.
2. Reduce Legal and Illegal Fraud by Ending Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility
Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE) allows states to deem households eligible for food stamps based on the receipt of a nominal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefit (such as a brochure or access to an 800 number).25 Through this alternative eligibility process, states can eliminate the federal asset test or set their own asset test, and they can increase the federal government's gross income limit from 130 percent of the poverty level to as much as 200 percent of the poverty level.
Currently, only seven states follow the federal government's SNAP eligibility standards: Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.
26 Another seven states use
BBCE to eliminate or reduce asset tests while keeping the federal income limit, and the remaining 36 states plus the District of Columbia use BBCE to significantly increase income and asset eligibility standards.
27
The seven states that use federal eligibility standards have significantly
lower rates of SNAP receipt--an average of 8.0 percent versus 12.3 percent nationwide--despite having the exact same average poverty rate.
25 BBCE regulations were permitted and encouraged through Clinton and Obama regulations. See: Matthew Dickerson, "Categorical Eligibility Allows Legalized Fraud," Economic Policy Innovation Center, February 5, 2026, https://epicforamerica.org/federal-budget/categorical-eligibility-allows-legalized-food-stamp-fraud/ (accessed February 14, 2026).
26 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)," Food and Nutrition Administration, https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/broad-based-categorical-eligibility (accessed June 21, 2026) 27 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)," Food and Nutrition Administration, https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/broad-based-categorical-eligibility (accessed June 21, 2026) 10
According to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, BBCE allowed 5.6 million individuals who were otherwise not eligible under federal standards to nonetheless receive food stamps.28 A report by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) estimated that eliminating BBCE would save federal taxpayers $100 billion and state taxpayers an additional $10 billion between 2026 and 2035.29
While BBCE has allowed millionaires and households with six-figure assets to legally qualify for food stamps that are counter to the law's intent, BBCE also exacerbates illegal improper payments because it eliminates eligibility checks for many households.30 The FGA estimated that states that use BBCE have one-third higher improper payment rates than those that do not, but that is only what the states measure and report.31
The USDA's Office of the Inspector General found that BBCE causes states to significantly understate their improper payment rates because households that receive food stamps because of BBCE are not included in the quality control process used to determine improper payment rates.32 28 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Trends in USDA SNAP Participation Rates: FY 2020 and 2022", Food and Nutrition Administration, December 29, 2025, https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/snap/national-participation-rates/fy20and22 (accessed February 14, 2026).
29 Michael Greibok, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility in Food Stamps is Fraud by Design and States Should Ban It," December 12, 2025, https://thefga.org/research/categorical-eligibility-in-food-stamps-is-fraud-by-design/ (accessed February 14, 2026).
30 Matthew Dickerson, "Categorical Eligibility Allows Legalized Fraud."
31 Ibid.
32 USDA, "FNS Quality Control Process for SNAP Error Rate," Office of the Inspector General, September 2015, https://usdaoig.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2025-09/27601-0002-41.pdf (accessed February 14, 2026).
11
In other words, households that are most likely to have been issued improper payments due to BBCE are assumed to have zero improper payments.
The Trump Administration's USDA is reportedly working on a regulation that would limit BBCE to households receiving substantial cash TANF benefits, rather than allowing nominal non-cash benefits to trigger eligibility. This, as well as increasing the amount by which states can increase the income limit, would significantly reduce both technically improper payments as well as unintended, gratuitous payments to individuals not in need.
Better yet, Congress should eliminate BBCE for SNAP to protect and preserve the program for those who truly need it. The No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025 (H.R. 416) would accomplish this by requiring households to meet the current federal income and asset standards for food stamps.33
3. Require Proper Measures of Improper Payments
Many improper payment measurements fall short of and often massively underestimate true improper payments. The skin-in-the-game requirements imposed on the SNAP program in H.R. 1 could incentivize states to undercount improper payments to avoid penalties. Thus, Congress should specify that the Administration cannot direct agencies to change measurements in ways that compromise the integrity of the measures, such as the Obama and Biden Administrations directing Medicaid measures to ignore eligibility errors.
Where programs fail to measure improper payments at all, Congress should require them to do so.
For example, H.R. 2242, the Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act, would require states to measure improper payments and establish goals for reducing and eliminating fraud and improper payments in the TANF program.34
Moreover, where programs' current measures fail to adequately estimate true improper payment rates, Congress should require agencies to adopt scientifically rigorous methods. For example, limiting or fully excluding improper payment assessments of households who qualify for SNAP based on BBCE almost certainly results in an inaccurate and artificially low improper payment rate. Failure to check the accuracy of Medicaid payments made by Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to providers results in similarly inaccurate and artificially low improper payment rates.35 If administrators of federal transfer programs fail to follow the federal government's requirements for measuring improper payment rates, or if they refuse to follow the federal government's program requirements--such as providing recipient information--they must face consequences.
33 No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025, H.R. 416, 119th Congress, First Session.
34 Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act, H.R.2242, 119th Congress, First Session, March 25, 2026.
35 Niklas Kleinworth and Brian Blase, "Preserve and Improve Medicaid, State Action to Protect the Most Vulnerable and Taxpayers," Paragon Health Institute, December 2025,
https://paragoninstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/12/Preserve_and_Improve_Medicaid_Kleinworth_Blase_RELEASE_ V1.pdf (accessed March 4, 2026).
12
That could include states having to pay for a share of the program costs, or third-party intermediaries being barred from receiving and distributing federal transfer benefits.
4. Impose Skin-In-The-Game Requirements
Just as a law without consequences is meaningless, laws aimed at protecting the integrity of taxpayers' dollars will fall short unless they include consequences for failing to spend it properly and prosecution of criminals who steal taxpayer dollars. Policymakers should build on H.R. 1's skin-in-the-game requirements for SNAP and Medicaid by imposing a cap, such as three percent, on the amount of improper payments that the federal government will pay. If programs administered by federal agencies exceed this cap, their funding could be reduced, and if state or other entities administering federal programs exceed the cap, they should be responsible for their improper payments over the cap or else lose their status as administrators of the programs.
Summary
With the federal government's improper payments costing eight weeks of gas and groceries for every household in America, and federal fraud potentially costing the equivalent of up to eight weeks of housing payments, Congress must take action to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the $4.2 trillion in taxpayer dollars that it redistributes through transfer payments each year.
That must begin with a full accounting of federal benefits in the same way the federal government requires a full accounting of taxpayers' incomes, and end with front-end eligibility verification and back-end accountability. The reforms outlined in this testimony--following the money, eliminating eligibility loopholes, accurately measuring improper payments, and imposing meaningful skin-in-the-game accountability--would help protect both taxpayers and the integrity of programs intended to serve those in need
Congress's constitutional authority over the purse does not end when taxpayer dollars leave the Treasury. Congress must ensure that funds are spent lawfully, efficiently, and for their intended purpose. That requires demanding transparency and ensuring that every federal dollar spent is subject to the same scrutiny and accountability that taxpayers themselves are legally required to meet.
* * *
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Greszler-Written-Testimony.pdf
* * *
My name is Rachel Greszler. I am a senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom. The views I express in this testimony ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Rachel U. Greszler, senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. * * * My name is Rachel Greszler. I am a senior research fellow in workforce and economics at Advancing American Freedom. The views I express in this testimonyare my own and should not be construed as representing any official position of Advancing American Freedom.
In my testimony today, I will briefly review improper payments, examine recent trends in the SNAP program, and propose four ways that policymakers can reduce waste, fraud, and abuse by requiring radical transparency and meaningful accountability for taxpayers' dollars.
Improper Payments are Enormous
According to its own measures, the federal government issued $184 billion in improper payments in 2025.
1 At about $1,400 per household, this equals more than the average household spends on gas and groceries over eight weeks.2 Such high levels of improper payments stem from the sheer magnitude of government transfers--totaling $4.2 trillion in 2025, or the equivalent of $31,400 per household--and a blatant lack of accountability. Instead of being penalized, programs with high improper payment rates are typically rewarded with bigger budgets.
* * *
1 PaymentAccuracy.gov. (accessed February 13, 2026). All improper payments included in this report equal "improper and unknown" payments and rates as reported on PaymentAccuracy.gov, minus all Department of War wage and travel compensation payments. These payments are netted out for consistency as no other departments report improper payments related to employee compensation or travel expenses.
2 BLS, "Consumer Expenditures, 2024," December 19, 2025, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cesan.pdf (accessed February 23, 2026).
2
Improper payments waste taxpayer dollars and threaten the ongoing viability of programs for those who need them. For example, some very large federal programs--like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)--regularly spend up to $1 out of every $3 dollars on improper payments. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program's (SNAP) $10.2 billion in reported improper payments is enough to cover annual grocery costs for 1.6 million households, and $97 billion in government health insurance programs' improper payments is enough to provide health insurance to 3.6 million families or 10.4 million individuals.3
Improper Payments Are Undercounted and Exclude Most Fraud and Abuse
What the government reports in improper payments is almost certainly a significant understatement. The federal government only tracks improper payments in some of its programs, and in those it tracks, it misses many improper payments. For example, Brian Blase and I estimated that if the Biden and Obama Administrations had not excluded eligibility checks from states' Medicaid audits, auditors would have found two times the amount of improper Medicaid payments over the past decade--nearly $1.1 trillion instead of the $543 billion Medicaid reported.4 3
Ibid, PaymentAccuracy.gov, and Kaiser Family Foundation, "2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey," October 22, 2025, https://www.kff.org/health-costs/2025-employer-health-benefits-survey/ (accessed February 23, 2026).
4 Brian Blase and Rachel Greszler, "Medicaid's True Improper Payments Double Those Reported," Economic Policy Innovation Center and Paragon Health Institute, March 3, 2025, https://epicforamerica.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/02/Medicaids_True_Improper_Payments_FOR-RELEASE_V3.pdf (accessed January 29, 2026).
3
Since eligibility is the primary source of improper payments, failing to check eligibility can enable rampant fraud. The magnitude of fraud recently discovered in Minnesota and elsewhere shows just how little of all fraud is actually known. In the eight years between 2017 and 2024, the entire federal government reported just $51.9 billion--an average of $6.5 billion per year--in "known fraud" across the entire United States.5 Yet, over the past year, federal prosecutors uncovered an alleged $9 billion or more that may have been stolen from Minnesota-run Medicaid programs alone since 2018.6
Despite the government's improper payment reports documenting less than $7 billion per year in "known fraud," the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.7 At the upper end, that is equivalent to nearly two months of housing payments for every household in America.8 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)--also known as food stamps--is a federally funded and state-administered program that first began in 1964.
9 As a need-based welfare
program, SNAP benefits should rise and fall with the poverty rate and unemployment rate, but both the number of SNAP recipients and the amount of SNAP spending have exploded since 2008.
From 1974 to 2008, an average of 8.3 percent of the population was on SNAP and the poverty rate averaged 13.0 percent.10 From 2008 to 2024, the percentage of the population on SNAP jumped to 12.8 percent even as the average poverty rate ticked down to 12.9 percent.11
5 PaymentAccuracy.gov (accessed January 31, 2025).
6 Alyssa Chen and Michelle Griffith, "U.S. Attorney: Fraud likely exceeds $9 billion in Minnesota-run Medicaid services," Minnesota Reformer, December 18, 2025, https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/12/18/u-s-attorney-fraud-likelyexceeds-9-billion-in-minnesota-run-medicaid-services/ (accessed February 17, 2026).
7 GAO, "Fraud Risk Management: 2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud, Based on Various Risk Environments," GAO-24-105833, April 16, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833 (accessed February 25, 2026).
8 BLS, "Consumer Expenditures, 2024."
9 While states do not fund the benefits, they pay 50 percent of SNAP administrative costs. In recent years, administrative costs have totaled $6.6 billion, or about seven percent of SNAP benefits
10 USDA, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Costs," Food and Nutrition Administration, June 12, 2026, https://fna-bwbufwdzbabpezgc.z01.azurefd.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-annualsummary-6.pdf (accessed June 22, 2026), and U.S. Census Bureau, "Table A-3. Poverty Status of People by Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin Using the Official Poverty Measure: 1959 to 2024," https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60287.html (accessed June 15, 2026).
11 Ibid.
4
The U.S. spent more on SNAP benefits in 2025 ($102 billion) when the unemployment rate averaged 4.3 percent than it did in 2011 ($68 billion) when the unemployment rate averaged 9.6 percent.12 This rise in SNAP spending stems from increased benefit amounts, expanded interpretations of Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE), and a roughly five-fold increase in improper payments.13
12 BLS, "Unemployment Rate," https://www.bls.gov/data/home.htm#employment (accessed February 13, 2026), and USDA, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation and Cost," https://fnsprod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-annualsummary-1.pdf (accessed February 13, 2026).
13 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
5
Last year, the SNAP program's improper payment rate was 10.9 percent. While data is missing for a handful of recent years (2016, 2017, 2021, and 2022), SNAP's improper payment rate jumped from an average of 4.8 percent between 2004 and 2015 to 11.4 percent between 2023 and 2025.
14
Improper payment rates in SNAP vary significantly by state, from a low of 3.3 percent in South Dakota to a high of 24.7 percent in Alaska in fiscal year 2024.15
The SNAP program's measure of improper payments through its quality control system is arguably well-designed to assess the accuracy of eligibility and benefit levels. If followed correctly, the reviews include statistically significant samples, independent reviewers, household interviews, third-party verification (such as state or Social Security wage records), and a federal review of select state-level reviews. The problem, however, is that the quality control only measures if the households that received benefits were eligible for benefits, and if they received the correct benefit amount under SNAP rules. Notably, the quality control process limits or excludes reviews of individuals who qualify based on states' expansions of SNAP eligibility (see section below on BBCE). The improper payments measure also does not include any of the fraud that occurs after SNAP benefits are delivered to households.
14 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
15 USDA, Food and Nutrition Service, "Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Payment Error Rates Fiscal Year 2024,"
June 30, 2025, https://fna-bwbufwdzbabpezgc.z01.azurefd.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/snap-fy24QC-PER.pdf (accessed June 22, 2026).
6
Much of SNAP Fraud Occurs After Benefits Are Distributed
While SNAP's improper payment rates based on eligibility and payment levels alone are already unacceptably high, much of the fraud that occurs in SNAP happens after benefits are distributed to households. The significant increase in SNAP spending despite relatively low poverty and unemployment rates appears to have incentivized increased fraud on multiple fronts. First, roughly $95 billion in annual SNAP spending is a high-value target for criminals to steal SNAP benefits, such as by installing skimming devices on retailers' card readers. Second, when states use BBCE to extend benefits to households that are not in poverty, the value of SNAP benefits is reduced and recipients are more likely to engage in fraud, such as by exchanging SNAP benefits for a discounted cash payout or colluding with retailers to use SNAP benefits on ineligible products.
Trump Administration Is Combating Fraud, but Faces Resistance
The Trump Administration has taken unprecedented steps to reduce waste and abuse in government programs, crack down on fraud, and provide unparalleled transparency.16 Among many actions, this includes President Trump issuing Executive Order 14243, "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,"17 and Executive Order 14395, "Establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud."18
The Trump Administration's efforts also include notable steps by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to investigate and prosecute fraud in the SNAP program.
19 In addition to
going after fraudulent use of SNAP benefits, the USDA is also trying to prevent fraudulent receipt of SNAP benefits. This includes the USDA requesting information from states on SNAP recipients so that the federal government--which pays 100 percent of SNAP benefits--can conduct nationwide program integrity measures.20 Such comprehensive reviews are necessary because, for example, state reviews cannot flag if an individual who claims benefits in their state has simultaneously claimed benefits in another state or in another 20 states.
To date, 21 states and the District of Columbia have resisted or challenged the USDA's request for information. The federal government should not fund programs that it cannot manage. If the courts 16See, for example: DOGE HHS, "Today the HHS DOGE team open sourced the largest Medicaid dataset in department history..," X, February 13, 2026, https://x.com/DOGE_HHS/status/2022370909211021376 (accessed February 18, 2026); The White House, "Here's What the Trump Administration Is Doing to Crush Minnesota's Fraud Epidemic," January 2, 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/01/heres-what-the-trump-administration-is-doingto-crushminnesotas-fraud-epidemic/ (accessed February 18, 2026).
17 Exec. Order No. 14243, "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos," 90 FR 13861, March 20, 2025, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/25/2025-05214/stopping-waste-fraud-and-abuse-byeliminating-information-silos (accessed June 21, 2026).
18 Exec. Order No. 14395, "Establishing the Task Force To Eliminate Fraud," 91 FR 13485, March 16, 2026, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/19/2026-05497/establishing-the-task-force-to-eliminatefraud#page- (accessed June 21, 2026).
19 USDA Food and Nutrition Administration, "USDA and Ohio Team Up to Shut Down Snap Fraud," June 5, 2026, https://www.fna.usda.gov/newsroom/fna-0002.26 (accessed June 21, 2026).
20 USDA, "Secretary Rollins Requires States to Provide Records on SNAP Benefits, Ensure Lawful Use of Federal Funds," Press Release, May 6, 2025, https://www.fna.usda.gov/newsroom/usda-0101.25 (accessed June 21, 2026).
7
rule that the states do not have to comply with requests that the Administration believes are necessary to protect the integrity of taxpayers' dollars, Congress should consider either devolving the SNAP program to the states or bringing SNAP administration within the USDA.
H.R. 1 Will Significantly Reduce Improper Payments in SNAP
Imposing new accountability on SNAP payments
was one of the great achievements of H.R. 1, the
One Big Beautiful Bill. Beginning in 2028, states
with improper payment rates or payment error rates
over six percent will be required to pay between
five percent and 15 percent of their SNAP
benefits.21 The Congressional Budget Office
estimated that these improper payment cost-sharing
provisions will save $68.8 billion over 10 years.22
To ensure the intent of this provision and to prevent states from undercounting their error rates, Congress and the Administration must require consistent and valid quality control estimates that include full eligibility checks of all sampled households, including those who qualify under BBCE.
H.R. 1's SNAP accountability provisions will go a long way to save taxpayer dollars and protect the integrity of the program. These measures--requiring states to pay for most or all of their improper payments--should be extended to other federal transfer programs.
How Congress Can Reduce Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP and Other Federal Programs At a basic level, reducing waste, fraud, and improper payments requires front-end verification and back-end accountability. That must begin with better accounting of federal benefits--tracking payments from beginning to end--and include consequences for irresponsible actions. State governments and other entities that receive and distribute federal funds must be accountable to the federal government, and the federal government must be accountable to the taxpayers whose money it takes.
The current Congress has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation that would all work towards reducing waste, fraud, and abuse in SNAP and other federal programs. Some of these proposals--the overwhelming majority of which have passed the House--include:
- H.R. 8028, the SNAP Fraud Reporting Act of 2026 (S.4716)
21 States with improper payment rates between 6.0 percent and 7.99 percent must pay for 5 percent of their SNAP benefits; states with payment error rates between 8.0 percent and 9.99 percent must pay 10 percent; and states with payment error rates of 10 percent or higher must pay for 15 percent of their SNAP benefits. Public Law 119-21 (2025), https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text.
22 CBO, "Estimated Budgetary Effects of Public Law 119-21, to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Title II of H. Con.
Res. 14, Relative to CBO's January 2025 Baseline," July 21, 2025, https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61570 (accessed June 18, 2026).
Improper Payment
Rate
State Share of SNAP
Benefit Costs
Under 6.0% 0%
6.0% - 7.99% 5%
8.0% - 9.99% 10%
10% and over 15%
Cost Sharing for SNAP Improper Payments
8
- H.R. 7567, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026
- H.R. 7658, the Enhanced Cybersecurity for SNAP Act
- H.R. 3887, the SNAP Anti-Theft and Victim Compensation Act of 2025
- H.R. 416, the No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025** (see Proposal 2 below)
- H.R. 762, the Snap Back Inaccurate SNAP Payments Act (S. 302)
- H.R. 8464, the Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act
- H.R. 8463, the Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act
- H.R. 8312, the Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act
- H.R. 8467, the Zeroing Out Monetary Benefits Improperly Expended Act
- H.R. 8107, the Government Audit and Accountability of Federally Funded StateAdministered Programs Act of 2025 - H.R. 6916, Program Integrity and Fraud Prevention Act of 2025
- H.R. 428, the Bonuses for Cost-Cutters and Fraud Preventers Act
- H.R. 1755, the Timely and Accurate Benefits Act of 2025
- H.R. 8872, the Preventing Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in TANF Act
Many of these proposals are in line with four major reforms that I propose:
1. Follow the Money: Account for Federal Payments as Thoroughly as Taxes Collected The first step in preventing fraud is understanding how it happens, which requires the federal government to be able to follow the money it spends as closely as it follows the money it collects.
In 2025, the federal government collected $4.4 trillion in income and payroll taxes and distributed $4.2 trillion in federal transfer payments. While the IRS requires taxpayers to account for every dollar they earn, not nearly enough accountability is required when the federal government redistributes over $4 trillion of the taxes it collects as transfer payments to others. The enormity of federal transfer payments combined with little accountability makes federal taxpayer dollars a high-value target for fraud, waste, and abuse.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.
23 Yet the federal government reported an
average of just $6.5 billion annually in "known fraud" over the past eight years.24 Until the federal government knows where the money it spends goes, it cannot reduce fraud and improper payments.
As a first step, Congress should require the same level of reporting and auditing of tax-takers as it does of taxpayers. This would include creating two new 1099 categories for safety net benefit recipients and providers. The provider, or distributor, of the federal funds would receive a 1099-P from the federal government (or subsequently from the state government or other intermediary) 23 GAO, "Fraud Risk Management: 2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud, Based on Various Risk Environments," GAO-24-105833, April 16, 2024, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833 (accessed June 21, 2026).
24 PaymentAccuracy.gov.
9
and would be responsible for sending recipients an annual summary of benefits on a 1099-BR form. Every benefit recipient and provider would be required to file their taxes with the forms, which should provide a nearly complete accounting of federal safety net funds.
Once a proper accounting of payments is established, Congress can consider penalties for providers' failure to properly report and disburse the taxpayer dollars they receive, similar to the penalties that apply to taxpayers who fail to properly report and pay taxes on the income they earn.
2. Reduce Legal and Illegal Fraud by Ending Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility
Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE) allows states to deem households eligible for food stamps based on the receipt of a nominal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefit (such as a brochure or access to an 800 number).25 Through this alternative eligibility process, states can eliminate the federal asset test or set their own asset test, and they can increase the federal government's gross income limit from 130 percent of the poverty level to as much as 200 percent of the poverty level.
Currently, only seven states follow the federal government's SNAP eligibility standards: Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming.
26 Another seven states use
BBCE to eliminate or reduce asset tests while keeping the federal income limit, and the remaining 36 states plus the District of Columbia use BBCE to significantly increase income and asset eligibility standards.
27
The seven states that use federal eligibility standards have significantly
lower rates of SNAP receipt--an average of 8.0 percent versus 12.3 percent nationwide--despite having the exact same average poverty rate.
25 BBCE regulations were permitted and encouraged through Clinton and Obama regulations. See: Matthew Dickerson, "Categorical Eligibility Allows Legalized Fraud," Economic Policy Innovation Center, February 5, 2026, https://epicforamerica.org/federal-budget/categorical-eligibility-allows-legalized-food-stamp-fraud/ (accessed February 14, 2026).
26 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)," Food and Nutrition Administration, https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/broad-based-categorical-eligibility (accessed June 21, 2026) 27 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE)," Food and Nutrition Administration, https://www.fna.usda.gov/snap/broad-based-categorical-eligibility (accessed June 21, 2026) 10
According to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, BBCE allowed 5.6 million individuals who were otherwise not eligible under federal standards to nonetheless receive food stamps.28 A report by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) estimated that eliminating BBCE would save federal taxpayers $100 billion and state taxpayers an additional $10 billion between 2026 and 2035.29
While BBCE has allowed millionaires and households with six-figure assets to legally qualify for food stamps that are counter to the law's intent, BBCE also exacerbates illegal improper payments because it eliminates eligibility checks for many households.30 The FGA estimated that states that use BBCE have one-third higher improper payment rates than those that do not, but that is only what the states measure and report.31
The USDA's Office of the Inspector General found that BBCE causes states to significantly understate their improper payment rates because households that receive food stamps because of BBCE are not included in the quality control process used to determine improper payment rates.32 28 U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Trends in USDA SNAP Participation Rates: FY 2020 and 2022", Food and Nutrition Administration, December 29, 2025, https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/snap/national-participation-rates/fy20and22 (accessed February 14, 2026).
29 Michael Greibok, "Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility in Food Stamps is Fraud by Design and States Should Ban It," December 12, 2025, https://thefga.org/research/categorical-eligibility-in-food-stamps-is-fraud-by-design/ (accessed February 14, 2026).
30 Matthew Dickerson, "Categorical Eligibility Allows Legalized Fraud."
31 Ibid.
32 USDA, "FNS Quality Control Process for SNAP Error Rate," Office of the Inspector General, September 2015, https://usdaoig.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2025-09/27601-0002-41.pdf (accessed February 14, 2026).
11
In other words, households that are most likely to have been issued improper payments due to BBCE are assumed to have zero improper payments.
The Trump Administration's USDA is reportedly working on a regulation that would limit BBCE to households receiving substantial cash TANF benefits, rather than allowing nominal non-cash benefits to trigger eligibility. This, as well as increasing the amount by which states can increase the income limit, would significantly reduce both technically improper payments as well as unintended, gratuitous payments to individuals not in need.
Better yet, Congress should eliminate BBCE for SNAP to protect and preserve the program for those who truly need it. The No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025 (H.R. 416) would accomplish this by requiring households to meet the current federal income and asset standards for food stamps.33
3. Require Proper Measures of Improper Payments
Many improper payment measurements fall short of and often massively underestimate true improper payments. The skin-in-the-game requirements imposed on the SNAP program in H.R. 1 could incentivize states to undercount improper payments to avoid penalties. Thus, Congress should specify that the Administration cannot direct agencies to change measurements in ways that compromise the integrity of the measures, such as the Obama and Biden Administrations directing Medicaid measures to ignore eligibility errors.
Where programs fail to measure improper payments at all, Congress should require them to do so.
For example, H.R. 2242, the Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act, would require states to measure improper payments and establish goals for reducing and eliminating fraud and improper payments in the TANF program.34
Moreover, where programs' current measures fail to adequately estimate true improper payment rates, Congress should require agencies to adopt scientifically rigorous methods. For example, limiting or fully excluding improper payment assessments of households who qualify for SNAP based on BBCE almost certainly results in an inaccurate and artificially low improper payment rate. Failure to check the accuracy of Medicaid payments made by Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to providers results in similarly inaccurate and artificially low improper payment rates.35 If administrators of federal transfer programs fail to follow the federal government's requirements for measuring improper payment rates, or if they refuse to follow the federal government's program requirements--such as providing recipient information--they must face consequences.
33 No Welfare for the Wealthy Act of 2025, H.R. 416, 119th Congress, First Session.
34 Eliminating Fraud and Improper Payments in TANF Act, H.R.2242, 119th Congress, First Session, March 25, 2026.
35 Niklas Kleinworth and Brian Blase, "Preserve and Improve Medicaid, State Action to Protect the Most Vulnerable and Taxpayers," Paragon Health Institute, December 2025,
https://paragoninstitute.org/wpcontent/uploads/2025/12/Preserve_and_Improve_Medicaid_Kleinworth_Blase_RELEASE_ V1.pdf (accessed March 4, 2026).
12
That could include states having to pay for a share of the program costs, or third-party intermediaries being barred from receiving and distributing federal transfer benefits.
4. Impose Skin-In-The-Game Requirements
Just as a law without consequences is meaningless, laws aimed at protecting the integrity of taxpayers' dollars will fall short unless they include consequences for failing to spend it properly and prosecution of criminals who steal taxpayer dollars. Policymakers should build on H.R. 1's skin-in-the-game requirements for SNAP and Medicaid by imposing a cap, such as three percent, on the amount of improper payments that the federal government will pay. If programs administered by federal agencies exceed this cap, their funding could be reduced, and if state or other entities administering federal programs exceed the cap, they should be responsible for their improper payments over the cap or else lose their status as administrators of the programs.
Summary
With the federal government's improper payments costing eight weeks of gas and groceries for every household in America, and federal fraud potentially costing the equivalent of up to eight weeks of housing payments, Congress must take action to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the $4.2 trillion in taxpayer dollars that it redistributes through transfer payments each year.
That must begin with a full accounting of federal benefits in the same way the federal government requires a full accounting of taxpayers' incomes, and end with front-end eligibility verification and back-end accountability. The reforms outlined in this testimony--following the money, eliminating eligibility loopholes, accurately measuring improper payments, and imposing meaningful skin-in-the-game accountability--would help protect both taxpayers and the integrity of programs intended to serve those in need
Congress's constitutional authority over the purse does not end when taxpayer dollars leave the Treasury. Congress must ensure that funds are spent lawfully, efficiently, and for their intended purpose. That requires demanding transparency and ensuring that every federal dollar spent is subject to the same scrutiny and accountability that taxpayers themselves are legally required to meet.
* * *
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Greszler-Written-Testimony.pdf
Jataware Principal Scientist Lederer Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following written testimony by Graham Lederer, principal scientist at Jataware, Ashburn, Virginia, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative.
* * *
Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Graham Lederer. I am a professional geologist working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following written testimony by Graham Lederer, principal scientist at Jataware, Ashburn, Virginia, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Graham Lederer. I am a professional geologist working at the intersection of artificial intelligence andcritical minerals at Jataware. For ten years before that, I served at the U.S. Geological Survey, where my work focused on mineral resource assessment and economic geology. I offer this testimony from both vantage points: as a former federal scientist who worked with exploration data, and as a private practitioner who sees how industry and AI systems use it.
My message is direct. Earth MRI is doing what Congress mandated it to do, yet the work is unfinished. In authorizing the program, Congress required completion of a comprehensive national modern surface and subsurface mapping and data-integration effort by November 15, 2031, but authorized funding only through fiscal year 2026 (30 U.S.C. 31l). That authorization expires this year. The question before the Subcommittee is whether to reauthorize and fund Earth MRI through completion of the national effort that Congress has already mandated. I urge you to do so.
The objectives of Earth MRI have remained clear throughout several administrations. The initiative was officially launched in 2019 and accelerated by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, and has since partnered with 40 states and territories to roughly triple the area of the country covered by high-quality airborne geophysical surveys (USGS, 2024). Despite considerable progress, modern high-resolution coverage remains limited to a fraction of the nation, and the complete dataset required for a comprehensive national mineral assessment is unlikely to exist before the current funding expires (NASEM, 2025). Stopping now would leave a congressionally mandated effort half-finished, just when momentum is at its highest in decades and the urgency of critical mineral issues facing the nation has increased.
How the Private Sector Uses Precompetitive Data
What happens to the data once it is disseminated, and why is public data decisive for private investment?
Earth MRI produces what the industry calls precompetitive data, foundational geoscience information that any company, university, or individual can obtain at no cost. Congress specifically required that this data be made electronically and publicly accessible (30 U.S.C. 31l). That requirement is what makes Earth MRI a catalyst for private investment rather than a substitute for it. The public availability of the data is the mechanism by which a relatively modest federal outlay mobilizes far larger private spending on exploration.
Exploration is a process of narrowing a search space. A company begins with a broad region and, through successive rounds of data acquisition, narrows it toward discrete drill targets. At each stage, it faces a decision to drill, deal, or drop, weighing the cost of acquiring more information against the value that information provides. Exploration and evaluation, the first phase of any mining project, commonly takes from two to ten years. Reliable precompetitive data compresses those timelines and lowers the risk attached to each decision. In its absence, an area is often perceived as less prospective, and capital moves to better-characterized jurisdictions abroad. The Fraser Institute's Annual Survey of Mining Companies captures this directly, treating the quality of a jurisdiction's geological database as a factor in companies' investment decisions (Mejia and Aliakbari, 2026). A recent survey of explorers in Nevada found the same pattern at the state level (Jowitt and Fisher, 2025).
Comprehensive data even has value where it finds nothing. Confirming that an area is barren is itself worth paying for, because it lets a company rule the area out and redirect capital. Reducing geological uncertainty by identifying both true positives (mineralized) and true negatives (barren) is the core objective of geologic exploration, and it enables companies to focus on the remaining economic, technical, and other risks.
The economic justification for Earth MRI can be inferred from analyses of comparable national precompetitive geoscience programs. For example, a study by Geoscience Australia estimated returns on public investment of about 500:1 (Deloitte, 2023). The National Academies has recommended that the USGS commission a comparable U.S. study (NASEM, 2025). I would support that recommendation, and I expect a domestic analysis to show a return similarly weighted in the public's favor.
Converting Data into Knowledge
There is an underappreciated feedback relationship between artificial intelligence and geoscience information. The data centers that power modern AI are themselves driving demand for critical minerals, which makes domestic discovery more urgent. At the same time, AI is becoming one of the most powerful tools available for converting geoscience data into discoveries. AI models fuse observations from magnetic, radiometric, electromagnetic, and hyperspectral data to reveal patterns a human analyst may miss, but their outputs depend fundamentally on the quality of the inputs. Only a program of Earth MRI's scale can supply the coverage and resolution required.
Federal research efforts targeted at critical minerals at the Department of Energy and DARPA rely on Earth MRI data for this purpose.
Earth MRI has prioritized data collection, creating an opportunity to leverage new tools to aid interpretation. The National Academies recommends developing AI and machine-learning tools to accelerate interpretation and release (NASEM, 2025). This is among the highest-leverage problems the Subcommittee could direct resources toward, and reauthorization is an opportunity to finish the data collection and to modernize how that data reaches the people who use it.
The same logic applies to the nation's legacy data. Much of our geoscience information resides in maps, charts, tables, and paper records that predate digital archives. Through the National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program, which Earth MRI funds to support state surveys, that material is being preserved and digitized. As it is digitized, it becomes usable as training data, following the same path that digitized text corpora have made possible for today's language models. Federal exploration programs going back to the Defense Minerals Exploration Administration of the 1950s produced discoveries that remain in production today, and that legacy data still helps target modern surveys (Frank, 2016). Preserving and digitizing it converts an underutilized archive into a durable national asset.
Partnerships and Workforce
Earth MRI is built on partnerships, anchored by the cooperative relationship between the USGS and the state geological surveys and extending to other federal agencies, tribes, universities, and private industry. The program has also rebuilt workforce capacity, enabling state surveys to hire and train geologists and geophysicists and giving early-career professionals a path that was disappearing a decade ago. This matters because expertise in economic geology and minerals is being lost to retirement faster than it is being replaced; the National Academies has documented the contraction of the mining and geoscience education pipeline (NASEM, 2024). Sustained funding allows institutional knowledge to be transferred rather than lost.
The Decision Before You
Earth MRI sits beneath every downstream goal this Subcommittee has identified, from securing critical mineral supply chains to the responsible development of federal resources. The data it produces derisks private exploration, the analysis it enables turns that data into discoveries, and the legacy it preserves compounds in value over time. Congress has already decided this work is worthwhile and set a 2031 deadline to complete it. The choice now is whether to fund the remaining years or to halt a national effort halfway through a mandate Congress itself established. I respectfully urge the Subcommittee to reauthorize and fund Earth MRI through completion.
As Clarence King, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, wrote in its First Annual Report: "We have only begun; we have the great work still before us" (King, 1880).
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I welcome your questions.
* * *
References Cited:
* Deloitte Access Economics, 2023, The economic value of government precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for Australia's resources industry: Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia), https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/148640.
* Drenth, B.J., and Grauch, V.J.S., 2019, Finding the gaps in America's magnetic maps: Eos, v. 100, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EO120449.
* Frank, D.G., 2016, Historical files from Federal Government mineral exploration-assistance programs, 1950 to 1974: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1004, https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ds1004.
* Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Pub. L. No. 117-58, Sec. 40201, 135 Stat. 958 (2021) (codified at 30 U.S.C. Sec. 31l).
* Jowitt, S.M., and Fisher, T.D., 2025, Nevada precompetitive data survey, 2025: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Exploration Survey PDS-2025, 24 p.
* King, C., 1880, First annual report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior: U.S. Geological Survey Annual Report 1, https://doi.org/10.3133/ar1.
* Mejia, J., and Aliakbari, E., 2026, Annual Survey of Mining Companies, 2025: The Fraser Institute, https://www.fraserinstitute.org.
* National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2024, Building capacity for the U.S. mineral resources workforce--Proceedings of a workshop: Washington, DC, The
* National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/27733.
* National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025, Meeting future U.S. mineral resource needs--The role of the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Program: Washington, DC, The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/29068.
* U.S. Geological Survey, 2024, Earth MRI: First five years accomplishments: U.S. Geological Survey, https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earth-mri-first-five-years-accomplishments.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-LedererG-20260625.pdf
* * *
Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Graham Lederer. I am a professional geologist working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources released the following written testimony by Graham Lederer, principal scientist at Jataware, Ashburn, Virginia, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Beneath the Surface: Earth MRI and America's Resource Potential." MRI is the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. * * * Chairman Stauber, Ranking Member Ansari, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Graham Lederer. I am a professional geologist working at the intersection of artificial intelligence andcritical minerals at Jataware. For ten years before that, I served at the U.S. Geological Survey, where my work focused on mineral resource assessment and economic geology. I offer this testimony from both vantage points: as a former federal scientist who worked with exploration data, and as a private practitioner who sees how industry and AI systems use it.
My message is direct. Earth MRI is doing what Congress mandated it to do, yet the work is unfinished. In authorizing the program, Congress required completion of a comprehensive national modern surface and subsurface mapping and data-integration effort by November 15, 2031, but authorized funding only through fiscal year 2026 (30 U.S.C. 31l). That authorization expires this year. The question before the Subcommittee is whether to reauthorize and fund Earth MRI through completion of the national effort that Congress has already mandated. I urge you to do so.
The objectives of Earth MRI have remained clear throughout several administrations. The initiative was officially launched in 2019 and accelerated by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, and has since partnered with 40 states and territories to roughly triple the area of the country covered by high-quality airborne geophysical surveys (USGS, 2024). Despite considerable progress, modern high-resolution coverage remains limited to a fraction of the nation, and the complete dataset required for a comprehensive national mineral assessment is unlikely to exist before the current funding expires (NASEM, 2025). Stopping now would leave a congressionally mandated effort half-finished, just when momentum is at its highest in decades and the urgency of critical mineral issues facing the nation has increased.
How the Private Sector Uses Precompetitive Data
What happens to the data once it is disseminated, and why is public data decisive for private investment?
Earth MRI produces what the industry calls precompetitive data, foundational geoscience information that any company, university, or individual can obtain at no cost. Congress specifically required that this data be made electronically and publicly accessible (30 U.S.C. 31l). That requirement is what makes Earth MRI a catalyst for private investment rather than a substitute for it. The public availability of the data is the mechanism by which a relatively modest federal outlay mobilizes far larger private spending on exploration.
Exploration is a process of narrowing a search space. A company begins with a broad region and, through successive rounds of data acquisition, narrows it toward discrete drill targets. At each stage, it faces a decision to drill, deal, or drop, weighing the cost of acquiring more information against the value that information provides. Exploration and evaluation, the first phase of any mining project, commonly takes from two to ten years. Reliable precompetitive data compresses those timelines and lowers the risk attached to each decision. In its absence, an area is often perceived as less prospective, and capital moves to better-characterized jurisdictions abroad. The Fraser Institute's Annual Survey of Mining Companies captures this directly, treating the quality of a jurisdiction's geological database as a factor in companies' investment decisions (Mejia and Aliakbari, 2026). A recent survey of explorers in Nevada found the same pattern at the state level (Jowitt and Fisher, 2025).
Comprehensive data even has value where it finds nothing. Confirming that an area is barren is itself worth paying for, because it lets a company rule the area out and redirect capital. Reducing geological uncertainty by identifying both true positives (mineralized) and true negatives (barren) is the core objective of geologic exploration, and it enables companies to focus on the remaining economic, technical, and other risks.
The economic justification for Earth MRI can be inferred from analyses of comparable national precompetitive geoscience programs. For example, a study by Geoscience Australia estimated returns on public investment of about 500:1 (Deloitte, 2023). The National Academies has recommended that the USGS commission a comparable U.S. study (NASEM, 2025). I would support that recommendation, and I expect a domestic analysis to show a return similarly weighted in the public's favor.
Converting Data into Knowledge
There is an underappreciated feedback relationship between artificial intelligence and geoscience information. The data centers that power modern AI are themselves driving demand for critical minerals, which makes domestic discovery more urgent. At the same time, AI is becoming one of the most powerful tools available for converting geoscience data into discoveries. AI models fuse observations from magnetic, radiometric, electromagnetic, and hyperspectral data to reveal patterns a human analyst may miss, but their outputs depend fundamentally on the quality of the inputs. Only a program of Earth MRI's scale can supply the coverage and resolution required.
Federal research efforts targeted at critical minerals at the Department of Energy and DARPA rely on Earth MRI data for this purpose.
Earth MRI has prioritized data collection, creating an opportunity to leverage new tools to aid interpretation. The National Academies recommends developing AI and machine-learning tools to accelerate interpretation and release (NASEM, 2025). This is among the highest-leverage problems the Subcommittee could direct resources toward, and reauthorization is an opportunity to finish the data collection and to modernize how that data reaches the people who use it.
The same logic applies to the nation's legacy data. Much of our geoscience information resides in maps, charts, tables, and paper records that predate digital archives. Through the National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program, which Earth MRI funds to support state surveys, that material is being preserved and digitized. As it is digitized, it becomes usable as training data, following the same path that digitized text corpora have made possible for today's language models. Federal exploration programs going back to the Defense Minerals Exploration Administration of the 1950s produced discoveries that remain in production today, and that legacy data still helps target modern surveys (Frank, 2016). Preserving and digitizing it converts an underutilized archive into a durable national asset.
Partnerships and Workforce
Earth MRI is built on partnerships, anchored by the cooperative relationship between the USGS and the state geological surveys and extending to other federal agencies, tribes, universities, and private industry. The program has also rebuilt workforce capacity, enabling state surveys to hire and train geologists and geophysicists and giving early-career professionals a path that was disappearing a decade ago. This matters because expertise in economic geology and minerals is being lost to retirement faster than it is being replaced; the National Academies has documented the contraction of the mining and geoscience education pipeline (NASEM, 2024). Sustained funding allows institutional knowledge to be transferred rather than lost.
The Decision Before You
Earth MRI sits beneath every downstream goal this Subcommittee has identified, from securing critical mineral supply chains to the responsible development of federal resources. The data it produces derisks private exploration, the analysis it enables turns that data into discoveries, and the legacy it preserves compounds in value over time. Congress has already decided this work is worthwhile and set a 2031 deadline to complete it. The choice now is whether to fund the remaining years or to halt a national effort halfway through a mandate Congress itself established. I respectfully urge the Subcommittee to reauthorize and fund Earth MRI through completion.
As Clarence King, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, wrote in its First Annual Report: "We have only begun; we have the great work still before us" (King, 1880).
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I welcome your questions.
* * *
References Cited:
* Deloitte Access Economics, 2023, The economic value of government precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for Australia's resources industry: Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia), https://dx.doi.org/10.26186/148640.
* Drenth, B.J., and Grauch, V.J.S., 2019, Finding the gaps in America's magnetic maps: Eos, v. 100, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EO120449.
* Frank, D.G., 2016, Historical files from Federal Government mineral exploration-assistance programs, 1950 to 1974: U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 1004, https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ds1004.
* Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Pub. L. No. 117-58, Sec. 40201, 135 Stat. 958 (2021) (codified at 30 U.S.C. Sec. 31l).
* Jowitt, S.M., and Fisher, T.D., 2025, Nevada precompetitive data survey, 2025: Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology Exploration Survey PDS-2025, 24 p.
* King, C., 1880, First annual report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior: U.S. Geological Survey Annual Report 1, https://doi.org/10.3133/ar1.
* Mejia, J., and Aliakbari, E., 2026, Annual Survey of Mining Companies, 2025: The Fraser Institute, https://www.fraserinstitute.org.
* National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2024, Building capacity for the U.S. mineral resources workforce--Proceedings of a workshop: Washington, DC, The
* National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/27733.
* National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2025, Meeting future U.S. mineral resource needs--The role of the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Program: Washington, DC, The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/29068.
* U.S. Geological Survey, 2024, Earth MRI: First five years accomplishments: U.S. Geological Survey, https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/earth-mri-first-five-years-accomplishments.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II06/20260625/119386/HHRG-119-II06-Wstate-LedererG-20260625.pdf
House Education & Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Allen Issues Opening Statement at Hearing on Lower Health Care Costs
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, released the following opening statement from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs":
* * *
Employer-sponsored care is the core of America's health system, and Education and Workforce Committee members understand that employers want what is best for their employees.
Although they are not required to offer health coverage, small businesses often choose to do so to attract and retain top ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, released the following opening statement from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs": * * * Employer-sponsored care is the core of America's health system, and Education and Workforce Committee members understand that employers want what is best for their employees. Although they are not required to offer health coverage, small businesses often choose to do so to attract and retain toptalent. As a former small business owner myself, I learned that investing in the health of my employees paid long-term dividends, both in productivity and the morale of the company.
Unfortunately, it is becoming more challenging for businesses of all sizes to offer competitive health care benefits. Ninety-eight percent of small employers offering health insurance are concerned that the cost of providing coverage will soon become unsustainable.
As health care costs continue to rise, employers are increasingly turning to innovative models--such as direct contracting and direct primary care--to deliver high-quality health care at a lower cost. Direct contracting allows employers to negotiate directly with providers, helping reduce costs, improve quality, and ensure more health care dollars are spent on patient care rather than administrative overhead.
Direct contracts may also include direct primary care, which allows patients to access primary care services for a flat membership fee. This model decreases the total cost of claims, and patients are getting more comprehensive care and experiencing better health outcomes.
While there is great success with these models, barriers still exist, making it especially difficult for small and mid-size employers to take advantage of them.
One of those barriers is lack of data. Employers often struggle to access their own health plan and spending data. Without this information, employers and providers are unable to identify waste, assess quality and savings, and design health benefits that best meet the needs of their workers.
Today we will hear how these models are benefiting providers, employers, and employees, and discuss ways we can remove barriers that stand in the way of greater innovation and lower costs. With that, I yield to the Ranking Member for his opening statement.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/7.1.2026_opening_statement.pdf
* * *
Employer-sponsored care is the core of America's health system, and Education and Workforce Committee members understand that employers want what is best for their employees.
Although they are not required to offer health coverage, small businesses often choose to do so to attract and retain top ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- Rep. Rick Allen, R-Georgia, chairman of the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, released the following opening statement from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs": * * * Employer-sponsored care is the core of America's health system, and Education and Workforce Committee members understand that employers want what is best for their employees. Although they are not required to offer health coverage, small businesses often choose to do so to attract and retain toptalent. As a former small business owner myself, I learned that investing in the health of my employees paid long-term dividends, both in productivity and the morale of the company.
Unfortunately, it is becoming more challenging for businesses of all sizes to offer competitive health care benefits. Ninety-eight percent of small employers offering health insurance are concerned that the cost of providing coverage will soon become unsustainable.
As health care costs continue to rise, employers are increasingly turning to innovative models--such as direct contracting and direct primary care--to deliver high-quality health care at a lower cost. Direct contracting allows employers to negotiate directly with providers, helping reduce costs, improve quality, and ensure more health care dollars are spent on patient care rather than administrative overhead.
Direct contracts may also include direct primary care, which allows patients to access primary care services for a flat membership fee. This model decreases the total cost of claims, and patients are getting more comprehensive care and experiencing better health outcomes.
While there is great success with these models, barriers still exist, making it especially difficult for small and mid-size employers to take advantage of them.
One of those barriers is lack of data. Employers often struggle to access their own health plan and spending data. Without this information, employers and providers are unable to identify waste, assess quality and savings, and design health benefits that best meet the needs of their workers.
Today we will hear how these models are benefiting providers, employers, and employees, and discuss ways we can remove barriers that stand in the way of greater innovation and lower costs. With that, I yield to the Ranking Member for his opening statement.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/7.1.2026_opening_statement.pdf
Food Research & Action Center Director Plata-Nino Testifies Before House Oversight & Government Reform Subcommittee (Part 2 of 2)
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Gina Plata-Nino, director of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program policy and advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP."
* * *
(Continued from Part 1 of 2)
5. Strengthen Quality-Control Systems While Maintaining Access
The SNAP Quality Control system remains an important accountability tool. Congress should continue to support robust quality-control ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Gina Plata-Nino, director of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program policy and advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." * * * (Continued from Part 1 of 2) 5. Strengthen Quality-Control Systems While Maintaining Access The SNAP Quality Control system remains an important accountability tool. Congress should continue to support robust quality-controlreviews and corrective action efforts while ensuring that performance measures do not create incentives that discourage participation among eligible households.
States should be encouraged to address the root causes of errors through training, process improvements, and system modernization, rather than by imposing additional procedural barriers.
6. Ensure Adequate Technical Assistance and Federal Support
USDA plays a critical role in helping states improve payment accuracy and program administration. USDA's decision to relocate and cut its workforce will impact USDA's ability to support integrity efforts. Congress should ensure USDA has the staffing and resources necessary to:
* provide technical assistance
* conduct root-cause analyses
* share best practices
* support state modernization efforts
* assist states in implementing new statutory requirements
Strong federal-state partnerships have historically been one of the primary reasons SNAP maintains high levels of accountability.
7. Protect Access While Promoting Accountability
Program integrity and program access are complementary goals, not competing objectives.
Congress should evaluate policy changes based on whether they:
* improve payment accuracy
* reduce fraud and theft
* maintain or improve access for eligible household.
* reduce administrative burden
* strengthen customer service
* improve long-term food security outcomes
Policies that reduce SNAP participation among eligible households without addressing the underlying causes of errors or fraud ultimately weaken both program effectiveness and public confidence.
8. Reassess the Use of Payment Error Rates as the Basis for State Benefit Cost-Sharing Payment error rates were intended as a quality-control and management tool, not as a mechanism to shift SNAP benefit costs to states. Congress should evaluate whether tying state benefit-cost obligations to payment error rates creates unintended incentives that encourage procedural barriers, increase churn, reduce participation among eligible households, and divert resources from technology modernization and fraud prevention efforts.
States should be encouraged to improve accuracy through investments in administrative capacity and continuous improvement rather than through fiscal penalties that may undermine access and increase food insecurity.
* * *
Original text here: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Plata-Nino-Written-Testimony.pdf
* * *
(Continued from Part 1 of 2)
5. Strengthen Quality-Control Systems While Maintaining Access
The SNAP Quality Control system remains an important accountability tool. Congress should continue to support robust quality-control ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency released the following written testimony by Gina Plata-Nino, director of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program policy and advocacy at the Food Research and Action Center, from a June 25, 2026, hearing entitled "Combating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in SNAP." * * * (Continued from Part 1 of 2) 5. Strengthen Quality-Control Systems While Maintaining Access The SNAP Quality Control system remains an important accountability tool. Congress should continue to support robust quality-controlreviews and corrective action efforts while ensuring that performance measures do not create incentives that discourage participation among eligible households.
States should be encouraged to address the root causes of errors through training, process improvements, and system modernization, rather than by imposing additional procedural barriers.
6. Ensure Adequate Technical Assistance and Federal Support
USDA plays a critical role in helping states improve payment accuracy and program administration. USDA's decision to relocate and cut its workforce will impact USDA's ability to support integrity efforts. Congress should ensure USDA has the staffing and resources necessary to:
* provide technical assistance
* conduct root-cause analyses
* share best practices
* support state modernization efforts
* assist states in implementing new statutory requirements
Strong federal-state partnerships have historically been one of the primary reasons SNAP maintains high levels of accountability.
7. Protect Access While Promoting Accountability
Program integrity and program access are complementary goals, not competing objectives.
Congress should evaluate policy changes based on whether they:
* improve payment accuracy
* reduce fraud and theft
* maintain or improve access for eligible household.
* reduce administrative burden
* strengthen customer service
* improve long-term food security outcomes
Policies that reduce SNAP participation among eligible households without addressing the underlying causes of errors or fraud ultimately weaken both program effectiveness and public confidence.
8. Reassess the Use of Payment Error Rates as the Basis for State Benefit Cost-Sharing Payment error rates were intended as a quality-control and management tool, not as a mechanism to shift SNAP benefit costs to states. Congress should evaluate whether tying state benefit-cost obligations to payment error rates creates unintended incentives that encourage procedural barriers, increase churn, reduce participation among eligible households, and divert resources from technology modernization and fraud prevention efforts.
States should be encouraged to improve accuracy through investments in administrative capacity and continuous improvement rather than through fiscal penalties that may undermine access and increase food insecurity.
* * *
Original text here: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Plata-Nino-Written-Testimony.pdf
ERISA Industry Committee President Gelfand Testifies Before House Education & Workforce Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following testimony by James Gelfand, president and CEO of the ERISA Industry Committee, from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs":
* * *
Chairman Allen, Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on direct contracting and its impact on America's largest employers and their employees. I'm James Gelfand, President and CEO of The ERISA Industry Committee ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following testimony by James Gelfand, president and CEO of the ERISA Industry Committee, from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs": * * * Chairman Allen, Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on direct contracting and its impact on America's largest employers and their employees. I'm James Gelfand, President and CEO of The ERISA Industry Committee(ERIC), the only national association that advocates exclusively for large employers on health, retirement, and compensation policies at the federal, state, and local levels. ERIC member companies are leaders in every sector of the economy, with employees in every state, and we represent them in their capacity as sponsors of employee benefit plans for their workforce.
Each of you and your constituents likely engage with an ERIC member company when you drive a car or fill it with gas, use a cell phone or a computer, visit a bank or hotel, fly on an airplane, watch TV, benefit from our national defense, go shopping, receive or send a package, visit a restaurant, or enjoy a soft drink.
Our member companies offer comprehensive health benefits to employees, their families, and often retirees. On average, large employers pay around 80 percent of health care costs on behalf of their beneficiaries. There are over 154 million people who receive coverage through employer-sponsored insurance and over 100 million of those receive coverage through ERISA self-insured plans./1
All of this taken together means that the vast majority of Americans receive their health care coverage through employers, who shoulder exponential costs associated with the coverage they provide.
And these costs are not projected to abate - premium costs for employer-sponsored plans are now growing at a rate of six to seven percent each year./2
For ERIC's member companies, some of whom provide coverage to over a million beneficiaries across the country, this translates into very real dollars - dollars that are not attributable to any revenue potential, but rather merely a loss on their books, which could have been otherwise realized as increases in wages and other employee benefits.
* * *
1 KFF's analysis of data from the 2023 American Community Survey included in KFF's 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey published October 22, 2025. See KFF. Health insurance coverage of the population ages 0-64 [Internet]. San Francisco (CA): KFF; [cited 2025 Sep 15]. [Time frame: 2023].
2 Based on data comparison from Claxton, G., Rae, M., Damico, A., Winger, A., & Wager, E. (2025). Health benefits in 2025: Family premiums rise 6 percent, large employers increase coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss. Health Affairs, 44(11). https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2025.01106
* * *
ERIC member companies provide health benefits to attract and retain employees, to compete for human capital, and to improve employees' health and provide peace of mind. They roll up their sleeves and invest in their employees and communities across the country, improving access to health care. Our members are innovators who drive affordability and quality, through efforts such as the use of digital health, onsite clinics, direct contracting and direct primary care arrangements for their workers. They develop value-driven and coordinated care programs, implement employee wellness programs, provide transparency tools, and a myriad of other innovations that improve quality and value to help mitigate health care costs.
Employer direct contracting generally falls into three use cases. First, an employer may contract directly with a health system in a market where the plan can generate a significant volume of care, allowing the parties to align around better access, quality, and affordability for a concentrated employee population.
Second, an employer may contract with specialized and accomplished providers or health systems-- often referred to as centers of excellence--for services where demonstrated expertise, outcomes, and patient support can make a meaningful difference for employees and their families. Third, an employer may contract for capitated costs and population health management, including through Direct Primary Care (DPC) and Accountable Care Organization (ACO) arrangements, to strengthen primary care, coordinate services, manage chronic conditions, and create incentives for providers to keep people healthy rather than simply paying for each individual service delivered.
We appreciate being able to share some of our member companies' experiences with direct contracting and how it is lowering costs for employers while providing affordable access to health care providers and their services.
ERIC Members' Experience
Member Company 1
"Preferred Partnerships"
In 2015, one of our member company's began offering employees and their families in certain regions of the U.S. access to health care coverage through a direct contract arrangement Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model the company calls "Preferred Partnerships." The direct contracts between the company and large integrated health systems were structured around the triple aim of improving quality, enhancing the member experience, and lowering costs. Improving and supporting primary care became the central pillar of their Preferred Partnerships, where success is measured through improved clinical and member satisfaction outcomes as well as shared savings with company partners.
Direct contracting has allowed the company to shape the model of care in the primary care setting in ways that benefit patients. For example, in some Preferred Partnerships they have been able to ensure that access to behavioral health specialists is integrated in the model, as such integration of behavioral and physical health services can lead to better outcomes. Primary care doctors in these programs can have access to on-demand psychiatrist consultations as needed, and the behavioral health specialist in the practice can help facilitate soft transfers for patients needing a higher level of behavioral health care.
The company currently is engaged in three Preferred Partnerships and has had as many as five at one time. The Preferred Partnerships are located in various regions across the country where the company has larger concentrations of employees, dependents, and retirees, including in Puget Sound, Washington, southern California, and Charleston, South Carolina. They require provider partners to accept up- and down-side risk and meet financial, meaningful quality, and patient satisfaction metrics.
Over the last several years, the company has seen improvement in the health of plan participants who elect one of the Preferred Partnership medical plan options, including significantly better results in depression screenings, improved control of blood pressure and diabetes, and better early detection due to higher rates of cancer screenings. In addition, members like the customer-focus these programs bring to their health care experience and re-enroll at high rates. Approximately 30 percent of the company's eligible plan beneficiaries have enrolled in a Preferred Partnership program.
The company works hand-in-hand with their partners to rein in rising health care costs by developing innovative plan designs and service delivery mechanisms that produce high-quality, coordinated care.
The company also believes in incentivizing plan participants to seek care with clear evidence of measurably better outcomes. For example, employees and their families who choose to participate in the Preferred Partnerships benefit from lower paycheck deductions, access to zero-dollar costs for generic medication and primary care services, and higher employer contributions to employees' health savings account (HSA), to name of few.
Direct Primary Care
After seeing the success of their Preferred Partnerships and the benefit of focusing on highly coordinated and integrated primary care, the company searched for a way to bring high-quality, lower-cost preventive care to all plan participants throughout the country. While their U.S. population is concentrated in certain geographies, they are also spread-out across the country. As a result, the company, which employs thousands, looks a lot more like a smaller purchaser in certain health care markets. This is when they began exploring a Direct Primary Care (DPC) model of care to offer their plan beneficiaries.
DPC is an innovative alternative payment model for primary care in which patients, employers, or health plans pay the primary care practice periodic fees directly for unlimited access to primary care and prevention services in a medical clinic. Commonly, DPC fees are paid monthly but they can also be paid annually or semi-annually. One attribute that distinguishes DPC from concierge medicine, is that the DPC fee pays for the actual primary care services. In a concierge practice, the membership or subscription fee pays for access to the practice, and insurance is applied to the services rendered following care delivery.
A defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and their primary care doctor and care team. Coordinated primary care affords the patient more time with the doctor and allows the doctor and team the time to build a trusting relationship with their patients so they can better understand their health needs leading to earlier interventions. Empowering this relationship is the key to achieving superior health outcomes, lower costs, and enhanced patient experience.
Since the inception of DPC in 2004, studies have demonstrated outcomes including high patient satisfaction, reduced costs, and decreased hospital admissions./3
Others have shown cost reduction potential of up to 20 percent/4 and reduction in inpatient hospital admissions of 37 percent./5
The DPC model has produced meaningful results in the management of chronic conditions.
In a traditional primary care environment, the employer plan participants can experience average wait times for care of 21 days or more, forcing patients to use urgent care or emergency care or, worse, delaying care. A DPC team-based care model provides same and next-day access to care. This makes it easier for patients to engage through multiple modalities. The volume of virtual visits in the DPC arrangements ranges from 15 to 34 percent, while non-DPC virtual use averages 4 percent.
The company currently offers direct primary care in four locations: Puget Sound, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Mesa, Arizona; and San Antonio, Texas. They launched the first DPC arrangement in 2018 near their Mesa, Arizona facility as a pilot for local employees, their families, and early retirees. Preliminary data over a nine-month period indicated a 14 percent reduction in emergency room utilization and an 11 percent reduction in specialist spend. In addition, the use of virtual and digital access by participants was 32 percent higher than for non-participants. The program enjoys a Net Promotor Score (NPS) of 88 versus an average NPS of 58 across the health care industry./6
NPS scores quantify customer loyalty and satisfaction. A Net Promoter Score is a patients' rating on how likely they would recommend a health care provider or services. That matters because a high score indicates that patients are not only receiving care, but are satisfied enough with that care to recommend it to others.
Member Company 2
Another ERIC member company supports direct contracting arrangements that enable self-funded employer health benefit plans to work directly with physicians, labs, and specialists at mutually agreed upon rates. Through their direct contracting model, providers are paid in near real time outside the traditional carrier claims process, while plan sponsors receive transaction-level data that gives them clear visibility into where health care dollars are spent.
* * *
3 Satisfaction with one DPC practice showed an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) - which represents a patients' willingness to recommend the practice to a friend or colleague - of 86 on a -100 to 100 scale. In 2015, the industry's average NPS score for primary care was 2.7 and it dropped to -1.2 in 2019. See 2019 Updates in Primary Care Consumer Preferences, Advisory Board (Sep. 5, 2019), https://www.advisory.com/topics/clinicalservices/2019/09/2019-updates-in-primary-care-consumer-preferences
4 Fritz Busch, Dustin Greskowiak & Erik Huth, Direct Primary Care: Evaluating a New Model of Delivery and Financing, Society of Actuaries (May 2020), https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/researchreport/2020/direct-primary-care-eval-model.pdf.
5 Iora Health Claims Database 2009 - 2016.
6 Health systems and providers use the Net Promoter Score as a measurement tool for patient satisfaction that is done internally. The Net Provider Score is then shared with government agencies, third-party aggregators, research reports, or the health care provider or health systems own marketing materials. An example of a public matrix that aggregates self-submitted and publicly stated corporate NPS metrics for health systems, clinics, and payers is CustomerGauge Healthcare Benchmarks.
* * *
Today, the company's model serves more than 2,500 self-funded employer health benefit plans, covering 20 million lives and more than $100 billion in health care spending. Employers and patients are benefitting from this model - employees participating in direct contract arrangements had costs that were 40 percent lower with greater use of primary care and fewer emergency room visits and inpatient admissions. And, for example, in Michigan, plans that used the company's direct contracting arrangements saw medical costs that were 29 percent lower, measured by total medical spend per member per year, than the statewide commercial benchmark, which is increasing by 10 percent to 15 percent annually.
The company processes approximately 42,000 claims each day, with more than 99 percent of daily payments clearing without delays or complications. Under these direct contracting arrangements, Tier 1 rates are approximately 130 percent of Medicare, compared with commercial benchmarks that typically range from 200 percent to 300 percent of Medicare. As a result, providers can be paid in near real time, rather than waiting weeks for reimbursement through the traditional carrier claims process.
Centers of Excellence
Another way employers are using value-based plan designs is by reducing the cost-sharing for medical services obtained through "centers of excellence" (COE). These providers are typically health systems that have met the highest standards of achievement for treating a specific disease (e.g., cancer or heart disease) or providing medical services for a particular episode (e.g., hip and knee replacements or spine care). The idea is to encourage employees to select medical providers with high quality ratings and experience for a given procedure or medical condition, by providing a financial incentive to employees who choose to receive care from those providers.
A good example of the use of value-based insurance design is the Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN)./7
If an employee or family member chooses to receive care at one of the designated centers of excellence, the deductible and coinsurance are waived. The programs has had positive results.
Patients have achieved better outcomes with lower rates of preventable complications while those patients who chose another hospital instead of one of the centers of excellence were nine times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital. Employers and their employees have saved millions of dollars by avoiding unnecessary services and 100 percent of participating patients recommend the COE.
Opportunities for Additional Employer Direct Contracting
Many ERIC member companies that are not currently engaged in direct contracting are interested in exploring these arrangements in the future. Our member companies are looking for new ways to improve access, strengthen primary care, increase transparency, and reduce unnecessary health care spending for employees and their families. However, the current environment makes direct contracting complicated to establish and difficult to scale, particularly for employers with a geographically dispersed workforce or limited concentration in any one health care market.
* * *
7 Pacific Business Group on Health. (2019, July). Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.pbgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ECEN_Consumer_FAQs__July_2019.pdf
* * *
The passage of the Primary Care Enhancement Act (H.R. 1026) is an important first step in a longer process of making these models more workable for employers and employees. By reducing barriers related to DPC and HSA eligibility, Congress has helped create a clearer pathway for employers to consider broader direct contracting strategies. But additional steps will be needed to make these arrangements easier to implement, administer, and expand across markets.
Streamlining the process, creating clearer rules, and allowing employers to work together where appropriate could help more companies pursue direct contracting. Group-employer approaches may be especially useful in markets where one employer alone does not have enough covered lives to support a dedicated arrangement or negotiate effectively with providers. At the same time, employers face real challenges, including the complexity of contracting directly with providers, integrating direct contracts with existing plan administration and carrier relationships, ensuring compliance across state and federal requirements, managing data exchange and payment operations, and educating employees about when and how to use these arrangements. Addressing these barriers would make it easier for more employers to test, adopt, and expand direct contracting models that can lower costs and improve care.
Additional Policies to Drive Health Care Affordability - Transparency and Competition
ERIC applauds the Committee for passing the Health Data Access, Transparency, and Affordability (Health DATA) Act of 2026 (H.R. 9228)./8
H.R. 9228 will strengthen accountability across the health care system and help address many of the health care affordability challenges facing employers and employees alike. Importantly, the bill will allow plan sponsors to access claims data, which is essential to understanding where health care dollars are flowing, supporting enhanced benefit designs that better serve employees, and lowering premiums and overall health care costs. Employers are uniquely positioned to leverage health care data and transparency tools to improve health outcomes, lower costs, and enhance the value of employer-sponsored coverage.
* * *
The Committee has a critical opportunity to advance other affordability reforms that would support working families' ability to access employer-sponsored health benefits, including:
* PBM Fiduciary Accountability, Integrity, and Reform (FAIR) Act (H.R. 6837): Led by committee member Congressman Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) and Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), the bill clarifies that fiduciary standards for ERISA employer health benefit plans apply in full to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) when performing services on behalf of the plan. This would hold PBMs accountable to act in the best interest of the plan, doubling down on the reforms passed in Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026.
* Healthy Competition for Better Care Act (H.R. 6248): Led by Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) with Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Rick Allen (R-GA) as an original cosponsor, this legislation would improve fairness in contracting by allowing for enrollee incentives to choose high-quality and low-cost providers, allowing for insurers and employers to contract with hospitals and providers without requirements to enter into additional contracts with other affiliated providers or hospitals.
* * *
8 Large employer group support letter sent June 24, 2026
* * *
This measure will ensure that plan sponsors can build provider networks in a way that maximizes value for patients and excludes those sites of care where prices are inflated - including drug prices, as some hospital systems add unconscionable markups to drugs.
We encourage the Committee to hold a markup on these bills this year and support their enactment.
Furthermore, ERIC supports policies that address unnecessary costs for employers and patients, such as:
* Request For Proposal (RFP) Reform - Net Effective Cost Disclosures
Congress should consider policy changes to ensure that broker- and consultant-led RFP processes give a fair opportunity to a broad range of entities and are not designed to keep plan sponsors with a small set of vendors with regards to their drug benefit offering. Those RFPs should require bottom-line disclosures from RFP respondents that a plan sponsor can compare, apples-to-apples, to choose the lowest net effective costs for beneficiaries.
* Vertically Integrated GPOs and "Drug Companies"
Congress should consider clarifying to the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor that the language in CAA26 was intended to apply transparency to the entire PBM enterprise, including affiliates. This should include revealing the "spread pricing" between what is paid to the manufacturer and what is retained by the PBM for "white label" drugs, as well as applying the rebate passthrough requirement to the various "fees" collected by the PBM's group purchasing organizations (GPOs) in lieu of rebates.
Conclusion
In closing, large employers share Congress's goal of lowering health care costs and improving patient access. However, these objectives cannot be achieved without confronting roadblocks currently facing direct contracting from being implemented more broadly. Some of the bills and related reforms highlighted here represent critical steps toward restoring competition, aligning incentives, and ensuring that savings flow to the employers and patients who ultimately bear the costs.
ERIC stands ready to work with this Subcommittee to advance pragmatic solutions to drive health care affordability for working families. By promoting transparency, accountability, and market competition, Congress can help ensure that employer-sponsored health coverage remains available, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of American across the country.
* * *
Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/gelfand_testimony.pdf
* * *
Chairman Allen, Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on direct contracting and its impact on America's largest employers and their employees. I'm James Gelfand, President and CEO of The ERISA Industry Committee ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions released the following testimony by James Gelfand, president and CEO of the ERISA Industry Committee, from a July 1, 2026, hearing entitled "Direct Contracting: A Prescription for Lower Health Care Costs": * * * Chairman Allen, Ranking Member DeSaulnier, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on direct contracting and its impact on America's largest employers and their employees. I'm James Gelfand, President and CEO of The ERISA Industry Committee(ERIC), the only national association that advocates exclusively for large employers on health, retirement, and compensation policies at the federal, state, and local levels. ERIC member companies are leaders in every sector of the economy, with employees in every state, and we represent them in their capacity as sponsors of employee benefit plans for their workforce.
Each of you and your constituents likely engage with an ERIC member company when you drive a car or fill it with gas, use a cell phone or a computer, visit a bank or hotel, fly on an airplane, watch TV, benefit from our national defense, go shopping, receive or send a package, visit a restaurant, or enjoy a soft drink.
Our member companies offer comprehensive health benefits to employees, their families, and often retirees. On average, large employers pay around 80 percent of health care costs on behalf of their beneficiaries. There are over 154 million people who receive coverage through employer-sponsored insurance and over 100 million of those receive coverage through ERISA self-insured plans./1
All of this taken together means that the vast majority of Americans receive their health care coverage through employers, who shoulder exponential costs associated with the coverage they provide.
And these costs are not projected to abate - premium costs for employer-sponsored plans are now growing at a rate of six to seven percent each year./2
For ERIC's member companies, some of whom provide coverage to over a million beneficiaries across the country, this translates into very real dollars - dollars that are not attributable to any revenue potential, but rather merely a loss on their books, which could have been otherwise realized as increases in wages and other employee benefits.
* * *
1 KFF's analysis of data from the 2023 American Community Survey included in KFF's 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey published October 22, 2025. See KFF. Health insurance coverage of the population ages 0-64 [Internet]. San Francisco (CA): KFF; [cited 2025 Sep 15]. [Time frame: 2023].
2 Based on data comparison from Claxton, G., Rae, M., Damico, A., Winger, A., & Wager, E. (2025). Health benefits in 2025: Family premiums rise 6 percent, large employers increase coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss. Health Affairs, 44(11). https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2025.01106
* * *
ERIC member companies provide health benefits to attract and retain employees, to compete for human capital, and to improve employees' health and provide peace of mind. They roll up their sleeves and invest in their employees and communities across the country, improving access to health care. Our members are innovators who drive affordability and quality, through efforts such as the use of digital health, onsite clinics, direct contracting and direct primary care arrangements for their workers. They develop value-driven and coordinated care programs, implement employee wellness programs, provide transparency tools, and a myriad of other innovations that improve quality and value to help mitigate health care costs.
Employer direct contracting generally falls into three use cases. First, an employer may contract directly with a health system in a market where the plan can generate a significant volume of care, allowing the parties to align around better access, quality, and affordability for a concentrated employee population.
Second, an employer may contract with specialized and accomplished providers or health systems-- often referred to as centers of excellence--for services where demonstrated expertise, outcomes, and patient support can make a meaningful difference for employees and their families. Third, an employer may contract for capitated costs and population health management, including through Direct Primary Care (DPC) and Accountable Care Organization (ACO) arrangements, to strengthen primary care, coordinate services, manage chronic conditions, and create incentives for providers to keep people healthy rather than simply paying for each individual service delivered.
We appreciate being able to share some of our member companies' experiences with direct contracting and how it is lowering costs for employers while providing affordable access to health care providers and their services.
ERIC Members' Experience
Member Company 1
"Preferred Partnerships"
In 2015, one of our member company's began offering employees and their families in certain regions of the U.S. access to health care coverage through a direct contract arrangement Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model the company calls "Preferred Partnerships." The direct contracts between the company and large integrated health systems were structured around the triple aim of improving quality, enhancing the member experience, and lowering costs. Improving and supporting primary care became the central pillar of their Preferred Partnerships, where success is measured through improved clinical and member satisfaction outcomes as well as shared savings with company partners.
Direct contracting has allowed the company to shape the model of care in the primary care setting in ways that benefit patients. For example, in some Preferred Partnerships they have been able to ensure that access to behavioral health specialists is integrated in the model, as such integration of behavioral and physical health services can lead to better outcomes. Primary care doctors in these programs can have access to on-demand psychiatrist consultations as needed, and the behavioral health specialist in the practice can help facilitate soft transfers for patients needing a higher level of behavioral health care.
The company currently is engaged in three Preferred Partnerships and has had as many as five at one time. The Preferred Partnerships are located in various regions across the country where the company has larger concentrations of employees, dependents, and retirees, including in Puget Sound, Washington, southern California, and Charleston, South Carolina. They require provider partners to accept up- and down-side risk and meet financial, meaningful quality, and patient satisfaction metrics.
Over the last several years, the company has seen improvement in the health of plan participants who elect one of the Preferred Partnership medical plan options, including significantly better results in depression screenings, improved control of blood pressure and diabetes, and better early detection due to higher rates of cancer screenings. In addition, members like the customer-focus these programs bring to their health care experience and re-enroll at high rates. Approximately 30 percent of the company's eligible plan beneficiaries have enrolled in a Preferred Partnership program.
The company works hand-in-hand with their partners to rein in rising health care costs by developing innovative plan designs and service delivery mechanisms that produce high-quality, coordinated care.
The company also believes in incentivizing plan participants to seek care with clear evidence of measurably better outcomes. For example, employees and their families who choose to participate in the Preferred Partnerships benefit from lower paycheck deductions, access to zero-dollar costs for generic medication and primary care services, and higher employer contributions to employees' health savings account (HSA), to name of few.
Direct Primary Care
After seeing the success of their Preferred Partnerships and the benefit of focusing on highly coordinated and integrated primary care, the company searched for a way to bring high-quality, lower-cost preventive care to all plan participants throughout the country. While their U.S. population is concentrated in certain geographies, they are also spread-out across the country. As a result, the company, which employs thousands, looks a lot more like a smaller purchaser in certain health care markets. This is when they began exploring a Direct Primary Care (DPC) model of care to offer their plan beneficiaries.
DPC is an innovative alternative payment model for primary care in which patients, employers, or health plans pay the primary care practice periodic fees directly for unlimited access to primary care and prevention services in a medical clinic. Commonly, DPC fees are paid monthly but they can also be paid annually or semi-annually. One attribute that distinguishes DPC from concierge medicine, is that the DPC fee pays for the actual primary care services. In a concierge practice, the membership or subscription fee pays for access to the practice, and insurance is applied to the services rendered following care delivery.
A defining element of DPC is an enduring and trusting relationship between a patient and their primary care doctor and care team. Coordinated primary care affords the patient more time with the doctor and allows the doctor and team the time to build a trusting relationship with their patients so they can better understand their health needs leading to earlier interventions. Empowering this relationship is the key to achieving superior health outcomes, lower costs, and enhanced patient experience.
Since the inception of DPC in 2004, studies have demonstrated outcomes including high patient satisfaction, reduced costs, and decreased hospital admissions./3
Others have shown cost reduction potential of up to 20 percent/4 and reduction in inpatient hospital admissions of 37 percent./5
The DPC model has produced meaningful results in the management of chronic conditions.
In a traditional primary care environment, the employer plan participants can experience average wait times for care of 21 days or more, forcing patients to use urgent care or emergency care or, worse, delaying care. A DPC team-based care model provides same and next-day access to care. This makes it easier for patients to engage through multiple modalities. The volume of virtual visits in the DPC arrangements ranges from 15 to 34 percent, while non-DPC virtual use averages 4 percent.
The company currently offers direct primary care in four locations: Puget Sound, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Mesa, Arizona; and San Antonio, Texas. They launched the first DPC arrangement in 2018 near their Mesa, Arizona facility as a pilot for local employees, their families, and early retirees. Preliminary data over a nine-month period indicated a 14 percent reduction in emergency room utilization and an 11 percent reduction in specialist spend. In addition, the use of virtual and digital access by participants was 32 percent higher than for non-participants. The program enjoys a Net Promotor Score (NPS) of 88 versus an average NPS of 58 across the health care industry./6
NPS scores quantify customer loyalty and satisfaction. A Net Promoter Score is a patients' rating on how likely they would recommend a health care provider or services. That matters because a high score indicates that patients are not only receiving care, but are satisfied enough with that care to recommend it to others.
Member Company 2
Another ERIC member company supports direct contracting arrangements that enable self-funded employer health benefit plans to work directly with physicians, labs, and specialists at mutually agreed upon rates. Through their direct contracting model, providers are paid in near real time outside the traditional carrier claims process, while plan sponsors receive transaction-level data that gives them clear visibility into where health care dollars are spent.
* * *
3 Satisfaction with one DPC practice showed an average Net Promoter Score (NPS) - which represents a patients' willingness to recommend the practice to a friend or colleague - of 86 on a -100 to 100 scale. In 2015, the industry's average NPS score for primary care was 2.7 and it dropped to -1.2 in 2019. See 2019 Updates in Primary Care Consumer Preferences, Advisory Board (Sep. 5, 2019), https://www.advisory.com/topics/clinicalservices/2019/09/2019-updates-in-primary-care-consumer-preferences
4 Fritz Busch, Dustin Greskowiak & Erik Huth, Direct Primary Care: Evaluating a New Model of Delivery and Financing, Society of Actuaries (May 2020), https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/researchreport/2020/direct-primary-care-eval-model.pdf.
5 Iora Health Claims Database 2009 - 2016.
6 Health systems and providers use the Net Promoter Score as a measurement tool for patient satisfaction that is done internally. The Net Provider Score is then shared with government agencies, third-party aggregators, research reports, or the health care provider or health systems own marketing materials. An example of a public matrix that aggregates self-submitted and publicly stated corporate NPS metrics for health systems, clinics, and payers is CustomerGauge Healthcare Benchmarks.
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Today, the company's model serves more than 2,500 self-funded employer health benefit plans, covering 20 million lives and more than $100 billion in health care spending. Employers and patients are benefitting from this model - employees participating in direct contract arrangements had costs that were 40 percent lower with greater use of primary care and fewer emergency room visits and inpatient admissions. And, for example, in Michigan, plans that used the company's direct contracting arrangements saw medical costs that were 29 percent lower, measured by total medical spend per member per year, than the statewide commercial benchmark, which is increasing by 10 percent to 15 percent annually.
The company processes approximately 42,000 claims each day, with more than 99 percent of daily payments clearing without delays or complications. Under these direct contracting arrangements, Tier 1 rates are approximately 130 percent of Medicare, compared with commercial benchmarks that typically range from 200 percent to 300 percent of Medicare. As a result, providers can be paid in near real time, rather than waiting weeks for reimbursement through the traditional carrier claims process.
Centers of Excellence
Another way employers are using value-based plan designs is by reducing the cost-sharing for medical services obtained through "centers of excellence" (COE). These providers are typically health systems that have met the highest standards of achievement for treating a specific disease (e.g., cancer or heart disease) or providing medical services for a particular episode (e.g., hip and knee replacements or spine care). The idea is to encourage employees to select medical providers with high quality ratings and experience for a given procedure or medical condition, by providing a financial incentive to employees who choose to receive care from those providers.
A good example of the use of value-based insurance design is the Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN)./7
If an employee or family member chooses to receive care at one of the designated centers of excellence, the deductible and coinsurance are waived. The programs has had positive results.
Patients have achieved better outcomes with lower rates of preventable complications while those patients who chose another hospital instead of one of the centers of excellence were nine times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital. Employers and their employees have saved millions of dollars by avoiding unnecessary services and 100 percent of participating patients recommend the COE.
Opportunities for Additional Employer Direct Contracting
Many ERIC member companies that are not currently engaged in direct contracting are interested in exploring these arrangements in the future. Our member companies are looking for new ways to improve access, strengthen primary care, increase transparency, and reduce unnecessary health care spending for employees and their families. However, the current environment makes direct contracting complicated to establish and difficult to scale, particularly for employers with a geographically dispersed workforce or limited concentration in any one health care market.
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7 Pacific Business Group on Health. (2019, July). Employers Centers of Excellence Network (ECEN) Frequently Asked Questions. https://www.pbgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ECEN_Consumer_FAQs__July_2019.pdf
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The passage of the Primary Care Enhancement Act (H.R. 1026) is an important first step in a longer process of making these models more workable for employers and employees. By reducing barriers related to DPC and HSA eligibility, Congress has helped create a clearer pathway for employers to consider broader direct contracting strategies. But additional steps will be needed to make these arrangements easier to implement, administer, and expand across markets.
Streamlining the process, creating clearer rules, and allowing employers to work together where appropriate could help more companies pursue direct contracting. Group-employer approaches may be especially useful in markets where one employer alone does not have enough covered lives to support a dedicated arrangement or negotiate effectively with providers. At the same time, employers face real challenges, including the complexity of contracting directly with providers, integrating direct contracts with existing plan administration and carrier relationships, ensuring compliance across state and federal requirements, managing data exchange and payment operations, and educating employees about when and how to use these arrangements. Addressing these barriers would make it easier for more employers to test, adopt, and expand direct contracting models that can lower costs and improve care.
Additional Policies to Drive Health Care Affordability - Transparency and Competition
ERIC applauds the Committee for passing the Health Data Access, Transparency, and Affordability (Health DATA) Act of 2026 (H.R. 9228)./8
H.R. 9228 will strengthen accountability across the health care system and help address many of the health care affordability challenges facing employers and employees alike. Importantly, the bill will allow plan sponsors to access claims data, which is essential to understanding where health care dollars are flowing, supporting enhanced benefit designs that better serve employees, and lowering premiums and overall health care costs. Employers are uniquely positioned to leverage health care data and transparency tools to improve health outcomes, lower costs, and enhance the value of employer-sponsored coverage.
* * *
The Committee has a critical opportunity to advance other affordability reforms that would support working families' ability to access employer-sponsored health benefits, including:
* PBM Fiduciary Accountability, Integrity, and Reform (FAIR) Act (H.R. 6837): Led by committee member Congressman Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) and Congressman Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), the bill clarifies that fiduciary standards for ERISA employer health benefit plans apply in full to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) when performing services on behalf of the plan. This would hold PBMs accountable to act in the best interest of the plan, doubling down on the reforms passed in Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026.
* Healthy Competition for Better Care Act (H.R. 6248): Led by Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) with Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Rick Allen (R-GA) as an original cosponsor, this legislation would improve fairness in contracting by allowing for enrollee incentives to choose high-quality and low-cost providers, allowing for insurers and employers to contract with hospitals and providers without requirements to enter into additional contracts with other affiliated providers or hospitals.
* * *
8 Large employer group support letter sent June 24, 2026
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This measure will ensure that plan sponsors can build provider networks in a way that maximizes value for patients and excludes those sites of care where prices are inflated - including drug prices, as some hospital systems add unconscionable markups to drugs.
We encourage the Committee to hold a markup on these bills this year and support their enactment.
Furthermore, ERIC supports policies that address unnecessary costs for employers and patients, such as:
* Request For Proposal (RFP) Reform - Net Effective Cost Disclosures
Congress should consider policy changes to ensure that broker- and consultant-led RFP processes give a fair opportunity to a broad range of entities and are not designed to keep plan sponsors with a small set of vendors with regards to their drug benefit offering. Those RFPs should require bottom-line disclosures from RFP respondents that a plan sponsor can compare, apples-to-apples, to choose the lowest net effective costs for beneficiaries.
* Vertically Integrated GPOs and "Drug Companies"
Congress should consider clarifying to the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services and Labor that the language in CAA26 was intended to apply transparency to the entire PBM enterprise, including affiliates. This should include revealing the "spread pricing" between what is paid to the manufacturer and what is retained by the PBM for "white label" drugs, as well as applying the rebate passthrough requirement to the various "fees" collected by the PBM's group purchasing organizations (GPOs) in lieu of rebates.
Conclusion
In closing, large employers share Congress's goal of lowering health care costs and improving patient access. However, these objectives cannot be achieved without confronting roadblocks currently facing direct contracting from being implemented more broadly. Some of the bills and related reforms highlighted here represent critical steps toward restoring competition, aligning incentives, and ensuring that savings flow to the employers and patients who ultimately bear the costs.
ERIC stands ready to work with this Subcommittee to advance pragmatic solutions to drive health care affordability for working families. By promoting transparency, accountability, and market competition, Congress can help ensure that employer-sponsored health coverage remains available, sustainable, and responsive to the needs of American across the country.
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Original text here: https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/gelfand_testimony.pdf
Erickson Ranch Owner Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following testimony by Tim Erickson, owner and operator of Erickson Ranch, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain federal land in California (H.R.8454):
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Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify in support of Representative McClintock's H.R.8454, to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain Federal land in the State of California.
I ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following testimony by Tim Erickson, owner and operator of Erickson Ranch, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain federal land in California (H.R.8454): * * * Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify in support of Representative McClintock's H.R.8454, to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain Federal land in the State of California. Iam Tim Erickson, and for the last 137 years, my family has operated a cow-calf operation in the area that is now best known as Yosemite. My great-grandfather came to this country from Ireland and settled in northern California because he saw the promise of a future of land, water, and a bright way of life in the place my family still calls home. My grandfather started the operation as we know it today, running cattle in this highly productive landscape. My family has weathered a wide variety of challenges in this place, from the creation of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), to today's challenges of catastrophic fire, skyrocketing public access, and competing values for land that for seven generations has been used to feed our valley and beyond.
My wife, Bette Ann, and I took over the operation in our mid-20s. Today, I am able to work with my son, Dan, and his family to continue this legacy of stewardship and tradition. My grandchildren are the sixth generation to carefully manage these landscapes that range from high alpine meadows, productive riparian zones, and forested pastures. When I took over primary management as a young man, I assumed several USFS permits as part of the ranch portfolio.
Over time, we have acquired additional permits to expand our operation and improve our ability to graze cattle in rotations that made sense both for our family and the land. Ackerson Meadow has always been owned and used our family - at least as long as I can remember. We used the meadow as part of a larger rotation, where our livestock would graze in other parts of the meadow series in the summer, and we'd gather in Ackerson Meadow in the fall on the upper end of the allotment. It doesn't receive heavy utilization, but is a key part of how we move our cattle from the forest summer grazing lands to come back home in the fall. After we gather our cattle in the upper end of the meadow, we take the calves home in trailers and trail our mother cows home, about 50 miles. This fall cattle drive is something special for both us and our community.
It has built a long history of support for what we do, particularly when fire has threatened our lands and communities.
In 2013, much of our grazing allotments were burned. We lost forage and cattle, like many of our neighbors. After the fire, we spent a great deal of time rebuilding infrastructure and restructuring our grazing with USFS both to respond to the immediate damage of the fire, but also the massive rebound in forage in the next few years. We manage our grazing to reduce the fine fuels to mitigate the risk of a hot, fast fire moving through. This is important not only for the safety of our cattle and our family, but also for the neighboring lands. As we're discussing as part of H.R.8454, a significant portion of the neighboring lands are now part of Yosemite National Park, which receives millions of visitors each year.
Equally, the land subject to the terms of H.R.8454 has long been part of my grazing allotment. My family owned and managed this meadow as part of our ranch for more than 100 years, before it was sold following an estate transfer in my family. The buyer ultimately engaged with the Trust for Public Lands and made the decision to take the land out of multiple use.
When the Trust for Public Land acquired Ackerson Meadow in 2016 and subsequently donated the land to the National Park Service, it was widely opposed in the community because it further decreased the available land in the county for property taxes (Tuolumne County is more than 77 percent federal land, leaving just over 20 percent available for property tax). Additionally, the transfer ultimately created an unnecessary challenge for management of contiguous lands. The bill effectively swaps administrative jurisdiction between the USFS and the National Park Service (NPS) for a 160-acre parcel of National Forest System Land to be managed as part of Yosemite National Park (herein, "the Park"), and a 170-acre parcel of National Park System land to be managed as part of Stanislaus National Forest. By enacting this transfer, this committee would be addressing management challenges because of the "checkerboard" nature of the lands surrounding these parcels. The parcel currently managed as part of the Park was previously part of my federal grazing allotment, and is currently surrounded by the Stanislaus National Forest. By enacting this transfer, it eliminates an administrative inholding, clarifies the responsibilities of management, and returns a parcel to multiple use in a way that is beneficial for both USFS and for the community.
Eliminating administrative inholdings and streamlining land management is crucial for these areas that will face additional public pressures and fire risk each year. Grazing is a crucial management tool for meadows like Ackerson and Stone Meadows - both managed by my family - that are highly-productive and could be high risk ecosystems. We manage our grazing in rotations to reduce fuels at key points in the year before the tall meadow grasses dry out and are at risk of ignition. Additionally, our grazing has contributed to range improvement in Ackerson Meadow in support of riparian developments. This is particularly important because in this area, water can become scarce in the season which jeopardizes resources both for livestock and wildlife alike. I believe our shared priorities for this landscape should be keeping livestock grazing on the landscape, protecting the land for all of its productive uses, and reducing the burden on agencies and the American people.
Mr. Chairman, I'm thankful to Representative McClintock for introducing this bill and moving it through the legislative process. Too often, these administrative transfers that are good for the land and good for people get stuck in complex government processes. This bill has previously passed the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and has support from multiple administrations. Put simply, this is just good governance.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, I appreciate the opportunity to share a story from northern California with you today, and I hope you see the important and immediate impact your actions have on families like mine across the country. I thank you for your consideration, and urge the Committee to advance the bill.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-EricksonT-20260701.pdf
* * *
Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify in support of Representative McClintock's H.R.8454, to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain Federal land in the State of California.
I ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following testimony by Tim Erickson, owner and operator of Erickson Ranch, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on legislation to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain federal land in California (H.R.8454): * * * Chairman Tiffany, Ranking Member Neguse, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify in support of Representative McClintock's H.R.8454, to provide for the transfer of administrative jurisdiction over certain Federal land in the State of California. Iam Tim Erickson, and for the last 137 years, my family has operated a cow-calf operation in the area that is now best known as Yosemite. My great-grandfather came to this country from Ireland and settled in northern California because he saw the promise of a future of land, water, and a bright way of life in the place my family still calls home. My grandfather started the operation as we know it today, running cattle in this highly productive landscape. My family has weathered a wide variety of challenges in this place, from the creation of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir to the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), to today's challenges of catastrophic fire, skyrocketing public access, and competing values for land that for seven generations has been used to feed our valley and beyond.
My wife, Bette Ann, and I took over the operation in our mid-20s. Today, I am able to work with my son, Dan, and his family to continue this legacy of stewardship and tradition. My grandchildren are the sixth generation to carefully manage these landscapes that range from high alpine meadows, productive riparian zones, and forested pastures. When I took over primary management as a young man, I assumed several USFS permits as part of the ranch portfolio.
Over time, we have acquired additional permits to expand our operation and improve our ability to graze cattle in rotations that made sense both for our family and the land. Ackerson Meadow has always been owned and used our family - at least as long as I can remember. We used the meadow as part of a larger rotation, where our livestock would graze in other parts of the meadow series in the summer, and we'd gather in Ackerson Meadow in the fall on the upper end of the allotment. It doesn't receive heavy utilization, but is a key part of how we move our cattle from the forest summer grazing lands to come back home in the fall. After we gather our cattle in the upper end of the meadow, we take the calves home in trailers and trail our mother cows home, about 50 miles. This fall cattle drive is something special for both us and our community.
It has built a long history of support for what we do, particularly when fire has threatened our lands and communities.
In 2013, much of our grazing allotments were burned. We lost forage and cattle, like many of our neighbors. After the fire, we spent a great deal of time rebuilding infrastructure and restructuring our grazing with USFS both to respond to the immediate damage of the fire, but also the massive rebound in forage in the next few years. We manage our grazing to reduce the fine fuels to mitigate the risk of a hot, fast fire moving through. This is important not only for the safety of our cattle and our family, but also for the neighboring lands. As we're discussing as part of H.R.8454, a significant portion of the neighboring lands are now part of Yosemite National Park, which receives millions of visitors each year.
Equally, the land subject to the terms of H.R.8454 has long been part of my grazing allotment. My family owned and managed this meadow as part of our ranch for more than 100 years, before it was sold following an estate transfer in my family. The buyer ultimately engaged with the Trust for Public Lands and made the decision to take the land out of multiple use.
When the Trust for Public Land acquired Ackerson Meadow in 2016 and subsequently donated the land to the National Park Service, it was widely opposed in the community because it further decreased the available land in the county for property taxes (Tuolumne County is more than 77 percent federal land, leaving just over 20 percent available for property tax). Additionally, the transfer ultimately created an unnecessary challenge for management of contiguous lands. The bill effectively swaps administrative jurisdiction between the USFS and the National Park Service (NPS) for a 160-acre parcel of National Forest System Land to be managed as part of Yosemite National Park (herein, "the Park"), and a 170-acre parcel of National Park System land to be managed as part of Stanislaus National Forest. By enacting this transfer, this committee would be addressing management challenges because of the "checkerboard" nature of the lands surrounding these parcels. The parcel currently managed as part of the Park was previously part of my federal grazing allotment, and is currently surrounded by the Stanislaus National Forest. By enacting this transfer, it eliminates an administrative inholding, clarifies the responsibilities of management, and returns a parcel to multiple use in a way that is beneficial for both USFS and for the community.
Eliminating administrative inholdings and streamlining land management is crucial for these areas that will face additional public pressures and fire risk each year. Grazing is a crucial management tool for meadows like Ackerson and Stone Meadows - both managed by my family - that are highly-productive and could be high risk ecosystems. We manage our grazing in rotations to reduce fuels at key points in the year before the tall meadow grasses dry out and are at risk of ignition. Additionally, our grazing has contributed to range improvement in Ackerson Meadow in support of riparian developments. This is particularly important because in this area, water can become scarce in the season which jeopardizes resources both for livestock and wildlife alike. I believe our shared priorities for this landscape should be keeping livestock grazing on the landscape, protecting the land for all of its productive uses, and reducing the burden on agencies and the American people.
Mr. Chairman, I'm thankful to Representative McClintock for introducing this bill and moving it through the legislative process. Too often, these administrative transfers that are good for the land and good for people get stuck in complex government processes. This bill has previously passed the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and has support from multiple administrations. Put simply, this is just good governance.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, I appreciate the opportunity to share a story from northern California with you today, and I hope you see the important and immediate impact your actions have on families like mine across the country. I thank you for your consideration, and urge the Committee to advance the bill.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-EricksonT-20260701.pdf
BlueRibbon Coalition Executive Director Burr Testifies Before House Natural Resources Subcommittee
WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on the Recreation Permitting Improvement Act (H.R. 9248):
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Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Ben Burr, and I serve as Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a national nonprofit that has advocated for recreational access to America's public lands since 1987.
We represent members in all fifty states ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on the Recreation Permitting Improvement Act (H.R. 9248): * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Ben Burr, and I serve as Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a national nonprofit that has advocated for recreational access to America's public lands since 1987. We represent members in all fifty states-- the families, small businesses, and gateway communities whose lives are organized around access to the lands and waters this Committee oversees.
I want to begin with a place where that access has just been taken away, because it shows what is at stake in a bill that looks, at first glance, like a technical correction.
The West Mojave
This spring, a federal court ordered roughly 2,200 miles of designated routes across California's West Mojave closed, after finding that the Bureau of Land Management's travel-management analysis did not satisfy the law. I am not here to relitigate that ruling. I am here to describe what it does to the people who live at the edge of those routes. The small desert communities scattered throughout the riding areas -- the fuel stops, the diners, the motels, the outfitters and repair shops -- survive on the visitors who come to ride. Of these communities, the small desert town of Randsburg is going to be the hardest hit. A closure measured in years is not a hardship they weather; for many of them, it is a closure of their own. A shop that loses a riding season does not reopen when the routes do. It is simply gone, and the town that has avoided becoming a ghost town for over a century, will become one.
What those communities need right now is hope -- a credible reason to believe the closure is bounded, that there is a date on the other side of it. And that is exactly what today's permitting system fails to give them. The routes stay closed until BLM produces a travel-management plan that satisfies the court. That redo is a federal undertaking requiring coordination between BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service, with the consultation that listed-species law requires -- and there is no timetable holding it together, no published schedule, no single official accountable for finishing it. The regulatory framework underlying the original deficiency has since changed, so the agency's task is not to re-defend a standard that already failed, but to build a sound plan under current law. What matters now is that the plan actually gets finished, on a schedule the community can see. An open-ended remand is an open wound. A finalized decision, with the routes lawfully reopened, is the thing that lets a town plan its next season.
The BlueRibbon Coalition sought to participate directly in that litigation and was not permitted to intervene. It is in part because that door closed that I am here today, asking Congress for a tool that works upstream of the courtroom. We need a way to give these reviews a deadline and a coordinated process before the closure, not years after it.
What H.R. 9248 Does
That tool already exists. It is called FAST-41, and for nearly a decade it has helped large, complex infrastructure projects move through federal permitting on a predictable schedule. H.R. 9248 does one thing: it adds recreation to the list of sectors eligible to use it.
The bill is two sentences. It amends the definition of "covered project" in Section 41001(6)(A) of the FAST Act -- codified at 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4370m(6)(A) -- by inserting the single word "recreation" into a list of eligible sectors that today runs to nineteen entries, from energy and transmission to broadband, pipelines, and semiconductors. Recreation is conspicuously absent from that list, even though recreation projects on federal land routinely trigger the same multi-agency reviews and environmental impact statements that FAST-41 was built to coordinate.
I want to be precise about what this does and does not do, because the modesty of the text is the point. It changes no environmental law. FAST-41 does not amend, waive, or weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, or any other statute, and it predetermines the outcome of no permit. What a covered project receives is coordination: a designated lead agency, a published permitting timetable with synchronized deadlines, a dedicated advisor, and a public dashboard that lets applicants, agencies, and citizens all see where a project stands. It is voluntary. And critically for recreation, it does not depend on a project being enormous -- while the best-known eligibility path is reserved for projects likely to cost more than $200 million, the statute contains a separate discretionary pathway, with no dollar threshold, for any project that is subject to NEPA and complex enough to require an environmental impact statement or the involvement of more than two federal agencies.
That is the door recreation walks through, and almost every example I will give you fits it.
The Mountains
Consider the ski areas on our national forests. When a resort on federal land wants to add a lift, cut a run, or expand its boundary, the change must be approved by the Forest Service through environmental review. Those reviews now routinely run for years.
I will start with one I know personally. Brian Head, in southern Utah's Dixie National Forest, is my home mountain. Last year the Forest Service began an environmental impact statement on a proposed expansion there, and by the agency's own published schedule, the final decision is not expected for roughly three years -- from a 2025 start to a 2028 record of decision -- for a single resort's terrain plan, before a single lift is approved. That is the expected timeline if nothing slips.
Things often slip. In Congressman Hurd's own state, the picture is the same. Winter Park submitted its master development plan to the Forest Service in 2022; years later, its Vasquez Mountain expansion is still working through federal review. And when these reviews run their full course, the arc is long: Arapahoe Basin's Beavers expansion entered scoping in 2013 and did not reach a decision until 2016 -- a multi-year environmental impact statement for terrain that skiers can access today only because the process, eventually, ended. None of these projects was stalled by bad faith. They were slowed by the ordinary friction of an environmental impact statement colliding with an under-resourced agency -- exactly the friction a coordinated timetable is designed to manage.
The Reservoirs
The clearest case of all is on the water.
The reservoirs of the Colorado River system were built for water and power, but Americans have spent three generations turning them into something more. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area -- Lake Powell -- drew 4.7 million visitors in 2024, who spent an estimated $517 million in surrounding communities and supported roughly 4,830 local jobs, generating some $634 million in economic output. Downstream, Lake Mead National Recreation Area drew 6.4 million visitors that year, whose $408 million in spending supported about 3,660 jobs and $553 million in output -- the economic foundation of Boulder City. The same pattern holds at Colorado's largest body of water. Blue Mesa Reservoir, in Curecanti National Recreation Area, anchors the visitor economy of Gunnison and Montrose counties, drawing roughly 981,000 visitors in 2024 whose spending of about $51.5 million supported 412 local jobs and some $57 million in economic output. Page, Arizona lives on this. So do Boulder City, Nevada; Gunnison, Colorado; and Kanab and Hanksville, Utah, whose outfitters, fuel stops, and guide services are woven into the access these waters provide. That is not an incidental byproduct of a water project. That is an economy.
When the water drops, that economy does not pause -- it breaks in specific, traceable ways.
Marinas are stranded on dry ground. Boat ramps close mid-season. The Elk Creek marina at Blue Mesa has had to be physically relocated to deeper water; ramps at Lake Powell and Lake Mead have been chased downhill at a cost of well over a hundred million dollars. And every one of those fixes -- the relocated marina, the extended ramp, the access road built to reach receding water -- is a federal undertaking that runs through the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service, and, where listed species are present, the Fish and Wildlife Service, with no synchronized timetable holding the review together. The infrastructure is perpetually behind the shoreline instead of ahead of it, and the gap is measured in lost seasons for real businesses in real towns.
This is the conviction behind the BlueRibbon Coalition's own model legislation, the Colorado River Abundance Act, which would for the first time declare recreation a coequal purpose of the reservoir system alongside water supply, hydropower, and flood control. The act requires modernization plans, with real deadlines, for the marinas and ramps that gateway communities depend on. The premise of that proposal and the premise of H.R. 9248 are the same: when recreation is treated as an afterthought to the "primary" purposes of a federal project, the cost is not abstract. It lands on a marina operator in Gunnison, a guide in Page, a motel owner in Kanab.
Conclusion
Every place I have described -- the closed routes of the West Mojave, the mountains waiting years for a decision, the marinas stranded above the waterline -- shares one feature. In each, recreation was treated as an afterthought, and a real community paid for it. These communities are not asking for a shortcut around environmental law. They are asking for what every other major sector already has: a coordinated, predictable process, and a date they can plan around. They are asking for hope.
Congressman Hurd's bill delivers that hope in a single word. By adding "recreation" to the sectors eligible for coordinated federal permitting, H.R. 9248 makes a modest change in the statute and a profound one in the lives of the people who depend on these lands and waters.
Coalition supports the bill, and I respectfully urge its favorable consideration. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-BurrB-20260701.pdf
* * *
Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Ben Burr, and I serve as Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a national nonprofit that has advocated for recreational access to America's public lands since 1987.
We represent members in all fifty states ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 13 -- The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands released the following written testimony by Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, from a July 1, 2026, hearing on the Recreation Permitting Improvement Act (H.R. 9248): * * * Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Ben Burr, and I serve as Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a national nonprofit that has advocated for recreational access to America's public lands since 1987. We represent members in all fifty states-- the families, small businesses, and gateway communities whose lives are organized around access to the lands and waters this Committee oversees.
I want to begin with a place where that access has just been taken away, because it shows what is at stake in a bill that looks, at first glance, like a technical correction.
The West Mojave
This spring, a federal court ordered roughly 2,200 miles of designated routes across California's West Mojave closed, after finding that the Bureau of Land Management's travel-management analysis did not satisfy the law. I am not here to relitigate that ruling. I am here to describe what it does to the people who live at the edge of those routes. The small desert communities scattered throughout the riding areas -- the fuel stops, the diners, the motels, the outfitters and repair shops -- survive on the visitors who come to ride. Of these communities, the small desert town of Randsburg is going to be the hardest hit. A closure measured in years is not a hardship they weather; for many of them, it is a closure of their own. A shop that loses a riding season does not reopen when the routes do. It is simply gone, and the town that has avoided becoming a ghost town for over a century, will become one.
What those communities need right now is hope -- a credible reason to believe the closure is bounded, that there is a date on the other side of it. And that is exactly what today's permitting system fails to give them. The routes stay closed until BLM produces a travel-management plan that satisfies the court. That redo is a federal undertaking requiring coordination between BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service, with the consultation that listed-species law requires -- and there is no timetable holding it together, no published schedule, no single official accountable for finishing it. The regulatory framework underlying the original deficiency has since changed, so the agency's task is not to re-defend a standard that already failed, but to build a sound plan under current law. What matters now is that the plan actually gets finished, on a schedule the community can see. An open-ended remand is an open wound. A finalized decision, with the routes lawfully reopened, is the thing that lets a town plan its next season.
The BlueRibbon Coalition sought to participate directly in that litigation and was not permitted to intervene. It is in part because that door closed that I am here today, asking Congress for a tool that works upstream of the courtroom. We need a way to give these reviews a deadline and a coordinated process before the closure, not years after it.
What H.R. 9248 Does
That tool already exists. It is called FAST-41, and for nearly a decade it has helped large, complex infrastructure projects move through federal permitting on a predictable schedule. H.R. 9248 does one thing: it adds recreation to the list of sectors eligible to use it.
The bill is two sentences. It amends the definition of "covered project" in Section 41001(6)(A) of the FAST Act -- codified at 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4370m(6)(A) -- by inserting the single word "recreation" into a list of eligible sectors that today runs to nineteen entries, from energy and transmission to broadband, pipelines, and semiconductors. Recreation is conspicuously absent from that list, even though recreation projects on federal land routinely trigger the same multi-agency reviews and environmental impact statements that FAST-41 was built to coordinate.
I want to be precise about what this does and does not do, because the modesty of the text is the point. It changes no environmental law. FAST-41 does not amend, waive, or weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, or any other statute, and it predetermines the outcome of no permit. What a covered project receives is coordination: a designated lead agency, a published permitting timetable with synchronized deadlines, a dedicated advisor, and a public dashboard that lets applicants, agencies, and citizens all see where a project stands. It is voluntary. And critically for recreation, it does not depend on a project being enormous -- while the best-known eligibility path is reserved for projects likely to cost more than $200 million, the statute contains a separate discretionary pathway, with no dollar threshold, for any project that is subject to NEPA and complex enough to require an environmental impact statement or the involvement of more than two federal agencies.
That is the door recreation walks through, and almost every example I will give you fits it.
The Mountains
Consider the ski areas on our national forests. When a resort on federal land wants to add a lift, cut a run, or expand its boundary, the change must be approved by the Forest Service through environmental review. Those reviews now routinely run for years.
I will start with one I know personally. Brian Head, in southern Utah's Dixie National Forest, is my home mountain. Last year the Forest Service began an environmental impact statement on a proposed expansion there, and by the agency's own published schedule, the final decision is not expected for roughly three years -- from a 2025 start to a 2028 record of decision -- for a single resort's terrain plan, before a single lift is approved. That is the expected timeline if nothing slips.
Things often slip. In Congressman Hurd's own state, the picture is the same. Winter Park submitted its master development plan to the Forest Service in 2022; years later, its Vasquez Mountain expansion is still working through federal review. And when these reviews run their full course, the arc is long: Arapahoe Basin's Beavers expansion entered scoping in 2013 and did not reach a decision until 2016 -- a multi-year environmental impact statement for terrain that skiers can access today only because the process, eventually, ended. None of these projects was stalled by bad faith. They were slowed by the ordinary friction of an environmental impact statement colliding with an under-resourced agency -- exactly the friction a coordinated timetable is designed to manage.
The Reservoirs
The clearest case of all is on the water.
The reservoirs of the Colorado River system were built for water and power, but Americans have spent three generations turning them into something more. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area -- Lake Powell -- drew 4.7 million visitors in 2024, who spent an estimated $517 million in surrounding communities and supported roughly 4,830 local jobs, generating some $634 million in economic output. Downstream, Lake Mead National Recreation Area drew 6.4 million visitors that year, whose $408 million in spending supported about 3,660 jobs and $553 million in output -- the economic foundation of Boulder City. The same pattern holds at Colorado's largest body of water. Blue Mesa Reservoir, in Curecanti National Recreation Area, anchors the visitor economy of Gunnison and Montrose counties, drawing roughly 981,000 visitors in 2024 whose spending of about $51.5 million supported 412 local jobs and some $57 million in economic output. Page, Arizona lives on this. So do Boulder City, Nevada; Gunnison, Colorado; and Kanab and Hanksville, Utah, whose outfitters, fuel stops, and guide services are woven into the access these waters provide. That is not an incidental byproduct of a water project. That is an economy.
When the water drops, that economy does not pause -- it breaks in specific, traceable ways.
Marinas are stranded on dry ground. Boat ramps close mid-season. The Elk Creek marina at Blue Mesa has had to be physically relocated to deeper water; ramps at Lake Powell and Lake Mead have been chased downhill at a cost of well over a hundred million dollars. And every one of those fixes -- the relocated marina, the extended ramp, the access road built to reach receding water -- is a federal undertaking that runs through the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service, and, where listed species are present, the Fish and Wildlife Service, with no synchronized timetable holding the review together. The infrastructure is perpetually behind the shoreline instead of ahead of it, and the gap is measured in lost seasons for real businesses in real towns.
This is the conviction behind the BlueRibbon Coalition's own model legislation, the Colorado River Abundance Act, which would for the first time declare recreation a coequal purpose of the reservoir system alongside water supply, hydropower, and flood control. The act requires modernization plans, with real deadlines, for the marinas and ramps that gateway communities depend on. The premise of that proposal and the premise of H.R. 9248 are the same: when recreation is treated as an afterthought to the "primary" purposes of a federal project, the cost is not abstract. It lands on a marina operator in Gunnison, a guide in Page, a motel owner in Kanab.
Conclusion
Every place I have described -- the closed routes of the West Mojave, the mountains waiting years for a decision, the marinas stranded above the waterline -- shares one feature. In each, recreation was treated as an afterthought, and a real community paid for it. These communities are not asking for a shortcut around environmental law. They are asking for what every other major sector already has: a coordinated, predictable process, and a date they can plan around. They are asking for hope.
Congressman Hurd's bill delivers that hope in a single word. By adding "recreation" to the sectors eligible for coordinated federal permitting, H.R. 9248 makes a modest change in the statute and a profound one in the lives of the people who depend on these lands and waters.
Coalition supports the bill, and I respectfully urge its favorable consideration. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
* * *
Original text here: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/II/II10/20260701/119429/HHRG-119-II10-Wstate-BurrB-20260701.pdf