Federal Reports

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured loans from fiscal year 2018. Our audit objective was to determine whether FHA provided insurance on loans that were made to ineligible, delinquent Federal tax debtors.We found that FHA insured at least 56,376 loans worth $13 billion, which were not eligible for insurance because they were made to borrowers with delinquent Federal tax debt. In addition, it insured another 57,918 loans worth $14.3 billion to borrowers who had delinquent taxes and payment plans with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) but may not have met FHA’s requirement for 3 months of payments on the payment plans. We were not able to determine the eligibility of these loans because we did not have information showing whether these borrowers completed 3 months of payments on their payment plans.We recommend that FHA require lenders to obtain the borrowers’ consent to verify the existence of delinquent Federal taxes with the IRS during loan origination and deny any applicant with delinquent Federal tax debt not meeting FHA requirements. We also recommend that FHA revise its handbooks to reflect that tax liens and judgments are no longer reported on credit reports and for uniform treatment of delinquent tax debt for forward and reverse mortgages. (Summary of Audit Report or Memorandum)

The Postal Service began implementing the Dynamic Route Optimization (DRO) initiative in fiscal year (FY) 2016. The initiative allows for morning Highway Contract Routes (HCR) to change from a fixed-price contract with set routes (static) to a rate per mile (RPM) contract with varying departure times, lines of travel, and mail types transported based on mail volume (dynamic) to optimize routes thus reducing mileage and transportation costs. Our objective was to evaluate the cost savings for implementing DRO.

News reports have raised concerns about foreign threats to the United States biomedical research enterprise. In a letter to institutes receiving National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, the Director of NIH highlighted concerns about diversion of intellectual property; sharing of confidential information from grant applications; and the failure by some NIH funded researchers to report substantial financial support from other organizations, including foreign governments. Our objective was to determine whether NIH has policies, procedures, and controls in place for helping to ensure that institutions report all sources of research support, financial interests, and affiliations.