Enact unemployment insurance program integrity reforms

Research notes

• partial under the Requires-Congress ladder: “enactment of part of the ask is partial”. The Quote asks for “bipartisan commonsense UI program reforms, including” two named items; one integrity reform of the class was enacted and neither named item was.
• The enrolled text was read at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ21/html/PLAW-119publ21.htm and grepped after flattening: “National Directory of New Hires” occurs zero times, “unemployment compensation” fifteen, all within subtitle D of title VII.
• The OIG’s own legislative recommendations in the May 2026 semiannual report still ask for authority to reach state UI records and for expanded H-1B investigative authority, which is the cleanest evidence that the named reforms have not been enacted.
• Network review of the 2026-09-24 scan round: the first named reform is now delivered by regulation, not by statute, and the rung does not move. DOL’s final rule Federal-State Unemployment Compensation (UC) Program; Data Availability (FR 2026-18978, 2026-09-16, RIN 1205-AC11, docket ETA-2025-0004, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/16/2026-18978/federal-state-unemployment-compensation-uc-program-data-availability) removes the permissive disclosure at 20 CFR 603.5(i) and adds 603.6(c): the Department “interprets section 303(a)(1), SSA, as requiring each State UC agency to disclose confidential UC information upon request to a Federal official for purposes of UC program oversight and audits”, DOL-OIG included. Effective 2026-11-16; States that must change their laws have until 2027-09-16. The preamble grounds it in DOL-OIG’s warning since 2020 that its access “could end at any time”, and notes OIG’s fraud-investigation access already rests on 603.6(a). This is the Quote’s object — OIG access to state UI records — reached by an executive workaround under the “methods of administration” clause rather than by the statutory authority the Quote asks Congress for, and limited to oversight and audits. Playbook §3 logs an executive workaround on a Requires-Congress ask as attempted, and an attempted event appended after the 2025-07-04 partial would render as a fall that did not happen, so it is recorded here and not as an event; the rung stays partial on P.L. 119-21. The rule says nothing about the National Directory of New Hires, the Quote’s second named reform. Full text read at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-16/html/2026-18978.htm.