Trump admin’s proactive prevention vs. reactive cleanup saves millions for Americans

The Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that it has blocked nearly $100 million in federal payments to deceased individuals before they could be issued, applying a prevention-first approach rather than chasing solutions, akin to the FBI’s post-9/11 reforms. 

“President Trump issued an executive order for us to be able to go to the Do Not Pay to have it interact with the Treasury payment systems," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said following the announcement. 

"And as a result, so far we’ve saved about $100 million in payments that didn’t go to deceased people. And that would have gone out. We think that there’s up to $350 million that we can stop before the end of this year.”

The Treasury Department, via its Bureau of the Fiscal Service, recently screened over 885 million payments totaling about $2.77 trillion and flagged roughly 4,900 payments tied to deceased individuals as part of the expanded "Do Not Pay" system. 

The old system

Payments for programs like Social Security and Medicare go out automatically. Later, audits or investigations discover money sent to dead recipients (sometimes for years via identity theft, family fraud, or bureaucratic lag). 

The government then tries to claw it back, often with limited success, or writes it off as waste.

The new system

Under the Trump administration, the goal is to integrate real-time or near-real-time data (Death Master File into Do Not Pay) so the system flags and stops payments before they are issued. 

It’s designed to treat improper payments as an ongoing vulnerability to be disrupted upstream, not just investigated downstream. 

The “Do Not Pay” system now integrates better death records to catch issues upfront. Projections suggest hundreds of millions more could be saved annually as improper payments to the dead have historically run into the billions.

9/11 taught us that prevention is better 

By contrast, before 9/11, the FBI (and the broader intelligence community) operated largely in a law-enforcement mindset: investigate crimes after they happen, gather evidence, and prosecute. Terror plots were often treated as isolated criminal acts rather than a systemic, ongoing threat requiring prevention. 

Those attacks exposed massive failures in information sharing, pattern recognition, and proactive disruption, leading to reforms like the Patriot Act, fusion centers, a new emphasis on intelligence analysis over pure casework, and a “prevent, prepare, and respond” doctrine. The goal became stopping attacks before they occur, not just solving them afterward.

The Trump administration in similar fashion, and in this case, the Treasury Department is changing the focus to prevent waste, fraud and abuse before it happens.

Prevention-first attitude arrives at IRS

With so much sensitive information parked at agencies like the IRS, preventing fraud before it happens is a top priority of IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, who also serves as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration and has been tasked with implementing and expanding Trump Accounts, a tax-deferred savings program for children. 

On Tuesday, he appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" and said, "I spent my whole career protecting sensitive information. I believe in a deep cybersecurity ability to protect the American public, both at Social Security and IRS." 

He continued, "We've locked down, we've had the most effective audit we've ever had on a cyber right now at SSA after having much lower performance. And we cleaned up the whole control environment. We created a chief risk officer, which we never had before. And a government structure to increase control, much like we would in the private sector. We're in the best hands we've ever been in."

HHS is following suit: Prevention comes first

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the Trump administration is deferring more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud and noncompliance.

The move — $867.5 million from California and $199 million from Minnesota — requires the states to provide documentation proving high-risk claims are legitimate, further enforcing the administration’s broader proactive crackdown on entitlement waste, stopping questionable payments upfront rather than attempting to recover them later.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here.