Senator Hassan Leads Subcommittee Hearing on Cutting Waste of Taxpayer Dollars in the Federal Government

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Chair of the Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight Subcommittee, led a hearing this week to examine the 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on how to save taxpayer dollars by reducing duplication, overlap, and fragmentation in the federal government. The hearing featured Eugene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and the head of GAO.

“Since 2011, congressional and executive actions to implement GAO recommendations have resulted in $667 billion dollars in cost savings and other financial benefits for the government and taxpayers. This includes more than $71 billion in the past year alone,” said Senator Hassan. “I am committed to working in a bipartisan way to eliminate duplication, overlap, and fragmentation to save taxpayer dollars and improve outcomes for the American people.”

At the hearing, Senator Hassan and Comptroller General Dodaro discussed GAO’s recommendations for Congress and the administration to reduce wasteful spending by increasing efficiency and strengthening collaboration between federal agencies. For example, GAO recommended reducing costs to Medicare by establishing site-neutral payments for routine health care services, which Senator Hassan introduced bipartisan legislation to address. In addition, GAO recommended increasing coordination between federal agencies on tsunami alerts, which can lead to better program management and save lives.

Senator Hassan has focused on fiscal responsibility and cutting waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars in the federal government – working across the aisle to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. As Chair of the Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight Subcommittee, she introduced bipartisan legislation to save taxpayer dollars and cut waste by eliminating duplicative government programs based on GAO recommendations. Senator Hassan has worked to save and strengthen a whistleblower program at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that has led to more than $3 billion in savings. Senator Hassan was again recently named a “Fiscal Hero” by Fix the Debt, a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, for her work to find comprehensive solutions to address the national debt and save taxpayer dollars.

You can watch Senator Hassan’s opening statement here and the full hearing here.

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