Erroneous Payments Recovery Act of 2001

The Erroneous Payments Recovery Act of 2001 (H.R. 2547) was designed to reduce government waste by requiring federal agencies to identify and recover overpayments made to contractors. Under this bill, any executive agency that awards more than $500 million in contracts annually would be required to establish a cost-effective program to find and fix payment errors.

For everyday citizens, this bill aimed to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent accurately and that money lost to administrative mistakes is returned to the government. Recovered funds would first cover the costs of the recovery program itself, with the remaining money either returned to the original program’s budget or used to improve general agency management and reduce the national debt.