Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Feb. 27 that GAO added one new area to its 2025 high-risk list: improving the delivery of federal disaster assistance.

The update, released at the start of the 119th Congress, lists 38 high-risk areas that GAO said involve either large financial exposures (at least $1 billion) or serious risks to public health, safety or essential services. "We're adding one new area this year, and that's improving the delivery of disaster assistance," Dodaro said.

The nut graf: GAOsaid the programs on the list together present recurring risks that require congressional attention, executive action and sustained management. Dodaro told lawmakers that acting on GAO recommendations has previously produced large returns and that "we've saved over $760,000,000,000 over time" from implemented recommendations.

Most urgent among the items Dodaro emphasized were improper payments and the federal government's fragmented response to disasters. He told the committee improper payments remain "a very intractable problem," saying the government has recorded more than $150 billion a year in improper payments in recent years and that some programs have not reported full estimates. GAO also reiterated a long-standing concern about the federal information technology portfolio: "The government spends over a hundred billion dollars a year," Dodaro said, "most of that goes to maintain existing legacy systems and not to new technology." He warned that many legacy systems are decades old and pose security and sustainability risks.

Dodaro named examples on the high-risk list during his opening: Department of Defense financial management and weapon system acquisitions, the Department of Veterans Affairs' electronic health record deployment, and FAA air-traffic-control systems. He told members the list includes matters affecting critical infrastructure, cybersecurity and medical-product oversight.

Committee members of both parties welcomed the testimony and pressed Dodaro for specifics on where Congress could act first. Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and other Democrats said they supported measured reforms rather than sweeping staff cuts; Connolly told the committee, "You don't do it by taking a wrecking ball to the entire structure and hope you get the bad with the good." Several Republicans said they wanted faster action to recover taxpayer funds and eliminate waste.

Dodaro closed by urging sustained attention and implementation: "Action and heightened attention on these issues can save billions of dollars, improve public health and safety, and also go to the heart of improving the service and the effectiveness and efficiency and a return on investment and build better trust in our government institutions." The GAO report will be entered into the hearing record and GAO staff are available to assist Congress on implementing recommendations.

Ending: Members said they will use the report as a roadmap for oversight and legislative proposals; several requested follow-up briefings and written responses from agencies mentioned in the high-risk list.