Same Rules for Every Dollar: Who Has to Prove It?

Here is the whole argument in one line: in Washington and in Lincoln, the burden of proof is heaviest on the people with the least help and lightest on the people with the most.

A mother on Medicaid who misses one renewal letter can lose her coverage. A defense contractor that refuses to show its costs still gets paid. That's the pattern. The rest of this piece is the evidence.

Checking matters. For fiscal 2025, the national SNAP payment error rate was 10.62%, well over the 6% line Congress set, or about $10.1 billion in improper payments counting both overpayments and underpayments. Conservatives are right to press on that. Nebraska came in at 5.90%.

Nebraska also checks businesses. Under the Nebraska Advantage Act, $99.3 million in credits had been recaptured or had expired through June 30, 2025, and companies had repaid $64.8 million in recaptured benefits. That's a real clawback system, and Nebraska deserves credit for it.

So the question isn't whether to check. It's who has to do the proving.

Medicaid's big cleanup. When pandemic-era continuous coverage ended, states rechecked everyone. Over 25 million people were disenrolled nationally, and 69% of them lost coverage for procedural reasons, not because anyone found them ineligible, according to KFF's count of state reports to CMS. KFF notes these are often cases of an old address or a renewal packet not returned in time, and that many people cut off this way "may still be eligible."

In Nebraska, the state's final dashboard shows 140,304 members lost coverage, and 68,209 of those, about 49%, were procedural closures. DHHS's own definition: closed "for a procedural reason (e.g. failure to provide information requested)" and "may still be eligible for Medicaid."

SNAP churn. A USDA-funded study of six states found that 17 to 28 percent of SNAP households left and came back within four months in fiscal 2011. For 66 to 90 percent of those cases, the exit came at a scheduled recertification or required report, and most were off for a month or less. The study's words: "Procedural issues often led to churn. The most frequently cited example was nonresponse to a recertification notice." Every one of those cases costs the state staff time too.

Arkansas, 2018. Arkansas was the first state to put a work requirement on Medicaid. In five months, more than 18,000 people, about 25% of those subject to it, lost coverage, as the federal appeals court noted. A Harvard survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine found more than 95% of the people targeted already met the rule or should have been exempt, and found no significant gain in employment. One-third hadn't heard of the policy. Reporting was online, and lack of internet access was a common reason people didn't report. To be fair, Arkansas used data it already had to excuse about two-thirds of enrollees from reporting, and it added a phone option in December 2018.

This matters here because Nebraska's own Medicaid work requirements began May 1, 2026.

TransDigm. In 2019, the Pentagon's Inspector General found that TransDigm earned excess profit on 46 of 47 spare parts it sold to the Army and the Defense Logistics Agency, about $16.1 million of excess profit on $26.2 million in sales, with profit rates as high as 4,451%. When contracting officers asked for cost data on 16 contracts, TransDigm turned down 15. The IG found no rule in federal contracting regulations that "requires or compels contractors" to hand that data over. To be fair, the IG also found the contracting officers followed the rules, and TransDigm agreed to refund the $16.1 million after a House Oversight hearing.

A second IG audit in December 2021 found at least $20.8 million more in excess profit on 105 parts. Asked for cost data on 26 parts, TransDigm units provided it for 2. The IG wrote that audit reports "over the past 23 years" had flagged the same problem.

Compare the two sides. Miss the paperwork on Medicaid and you're out. Decline to show your costs on a sole-source part and you still get the contract, because the Pentagon often has nowhere else to buy it.

Contractor cost audits. The Defense Contract Audit Agency checks whether contractors' claimed costs are allowable. GAO reported a backlog of more than 20,000 of these audits at the end of fiscal 2011, some going back to 1996, representing "hundreds of billions of dollars in unsettled costs." The agency largely cleared it by 2018, mostly by auditing fewer: low-risk cost claims of up to $99 million are now picked for audit by sampling rates of 0.5 to 10 percent. Focusing on risk is sensible. Medicaid gets no sampling: every enrollee faces a legally required annual eligibility check.

For fiscal 2025, the Inspector General issued a disclaimer of opinion on the Defense Department's books, meaning auditors "could not obtain sufficient, appropriate audit evidence" to judge them. It was the eighth annual full audit, covering about $4.6 trillion in assets, with 26 material weaknesses. The earlier seven also ended in disclaimers (GAO for 2018 to 2022; IG for 2023 and 2024). GAO calls DoD "the only major federal agency that has never been able to receive a clean audit opinion."

A failed audit is not proof of theft, and the IG says officials "have made progress." The audits pay off, too: GAO notes the Navy found about $2.4 billion in inventory it hadn't recorded. Still, families rarely get eight years of patience on their paperwork.

Nobody needs to stop checking. Flip who carries the load.

• For families: use the data the state already has before asking for paper. Federal rules already require states to try that first (KFF). With work requirements now live in Nebraska, it matters more.
• For contractors: if you're the only seller, show your costs when asked. That is close to what the IG recommended.
• For incentives: keep Nebraska's recapture, and keep asking whether the reported jobs would have come anyway.

The people with the least help shouldn't carry the heaviest proof. Same rules for every dollar.

Previous, Part 2 of 3: Where the money goes. Buybacks, bonuses, and the pay gap.

Start the series, Part 1 of 3: Is it socialism? What the word means and how to talk about it.