H.R. 10558, the CLEAR Act, Would Make Judgment Fund Payments Searchable by Plaintiff and Lawyer — Introduced September 24, 2026, as Preliminary FY2026 Payouts Reach $6.27 Billion

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced H.R. 10558, the Clearer Liability Expenditure and Access to Reporting Act of 2026 — short title “CLEAR Act” — on September 24, 2026. It was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary the same day. As of October 5, 2026, the official bill-status record lists Rep. Hageman as the only sponsor, no cosponsors, no related bills and no action beyond the referral. Several other bills in the 119th Congress also carry the name “CLEAR Act”; this article is about H.R. 10558 only.

The bill amends 31 U.S.C. § 1304, the law behind the Judgment Fund — the standing appropriation that pays “final judgments, awards, compromise settlements, and interest and costs” against the United States when payment is “not otherwise provided for” and is certified by the Secretary of the Treasury. Subsection (d) of that law was added in 2019 by § 4201(b) of the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act (Public Law 116-9, approved March 12, 2019). It already requires Treasury to post, no later than 30 days after a payment, the agency involved, the name of the plaintiff or claimant, the name of their counsel, the principal and any attorney fees, costs and interest, a brief description of the facts, and the agency that submitted the claim. H.R. 10558 keeps that list and adds:

Monthly totals. The website would have to tabulate “the total number of payments per month, including how many payments were settlements,” searchable by agency, by plaintiff or claimant, and by counsel, “including identifying the counsel’s firm or office.”

A four-way split. Each category would be broken down by the total paid each month and then into payments (including settlements), attorney’s fees, court costs and interest.

A GAO report. A new subsection (e) directs the Comptroller General to “review each settlement” paid under the chapter and report to Congress every year on “sue-and-settle tactics,” including the agencies that use them most, average settlement amounts, and common characteristics and trends. The bill defines the term as any case in which a federal entity, in litigation or threatened litigation, settles or agrees “to withdraw, rescind, retract, or otherwise abandon a policy, regulation, rule, or contract, not to enforce a statute or regulation, or to perform any other Federal action.”

A confidentiality clause. A new subsection (f) reads: “The identity of any individual who discloses information with respect to a payment made under this section may not be disclosed.”

No. H.R. 10558 deals only with what Treasury publishes about Judgment Fund payments and what the GAO reports to Congress. It does not change who gets paid, how much, or when, and it has only been introduced. The bill text contains no application, claim form or payment to individuals. Anyone with a judgment or settlement against a federal agency is still paid through the existing process, in which the payment must be certified by Treasury.

Because the bill creates no claim process, a message offering to “file” a CLEAR Act or Judgment Fund claim for you does not describe anything in this bill. Your own payment information comes from the agency, the Justice Department or your lawyer in the case.

On privacy, the bill keeps the current exception word for word: Treasury must publish the listed details “unless the disclosure of such information is otherwise prohibited by law or a court order.” Today Treasury posts payment data every 2 weeks and states that “individual names have been redacted on this website to comply with the Privacy Act.” Treasury also replaces the description of facts with a case citation code, because those descriptions “often” contain personal information. The bill text does not address the Privacy Act directly.

Hageman’s September 24 release says: “An analysis of 113,969 Treasury Judgment Fund payments found the government paid $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2023, $2.7 billion in fiscal year 2024, and $2.9 billion in fiscal year 2025.” It links to our Judgment Fund analysis. The figures match the chart on that page, but they are calendar-year totals grouped by payment date, and the 2025 figure covers January through September only.

By federal fiscal year (October through September), the totals in Treasury’s Judgment Fund Report to Congress are $2.02 billion for FY2023, $1.86 billion for FY2024 and $4.36 billion for FY2025 (see the fiscal-year table). FY2025 had 9,317 payments, more than any fiscal year since the data begins in FY2009, and its total was the highest since FY2021. Of that, $43.6 million was recorded in the separate attorney-fee field. The release also states that agencies must repay the fund for only two types of payments.

The annual Report to Congress for FY2026, which ended September 30, 2026, has not been published. Treasury’s bi-weekly payment reports for October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026 add up to $6.27 billion across 7,960 payment lines. That is the highest fiscal-year total since FY2021. These are preliminary figures. For FY2025, the same bi-weekly reports summed to $4.30 billion, against $4.36 billion in the annual report (−1.3%). Details are in the FY2026 section of our analysis.

Of the preliminary total, $3.04 billion (48.5%) went to seven offshore wind companies for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, all under the citation “breach of express contract.” Roll Call reported on September 30, 2026 that the Interior Department has reimbursed $3.9 billion in total to six offshore wind developers through the Judgment Fund. It also reported that nine Democratic state attorneys general have sued over the agreements, arguing that the administration improperly used the fund. Payments under the Camp Lejeune Justice Act came to $559.2 million in 1,958 payment lines. During the government shutdown, the reports for October 1 through November 15, 2025 list only $306K in total.

Several things the bill asks for can already be seen in the data, and some cannot. In the annual reports behind our analysis, 71,284 of 113,969 payments (62.5%) name the plaintiff’s counsel, 996 of them only as “[REDACTED FOR PRIVACY].” Plaintiff names are not part of that published dataset. Every payment already carries a payment date, principal, attorney fees, costs and interest. A monthly fee/cost/interest split can therefore be built from the reports. There is no ready-made monthly tabulation, and no search by plaintiff.

Attorney fees are the part of the bill that ties most directly to the sue-and-settle debate. Our attorney fee analysis counts 3,009 Judgment Fund payments with an attorney-fee amount from 2009 through 2025, totaling $505.9 million. Of those, 2,151 payments ($349.0 million) are fees with no principal on the same row, mostly statutory fee-shifting awards paid directly to counsel. The Endangered Species Act leads that list with 390 awards worth $57.5 million.

How to read those awards is disputed. Hageman’s release describes sue-and-settle as a practice “whereby an outside group sues an agency and, instead of fighting the case, it uses taxpayers’ money to pay the group and its legal bills.” She said: “Taxpayers are on the hook when the federal government settles a lawsuit, but the information on where that money goes is difficult to track. The CLEAR Act shines a light on every payment, shows who collects the money, and gives Congress the information to detect sue-and-settle schemes.” The data alone does not show whether a given payment came from a contested case or a negotiated one. A fee award or a settlement is not, by itself, a finding of wrongdoing by either side.

Next, the bill sits with the House Judiciary Committee. As of October 5, 2026, the bill-status record shows no hearing or markup. We will update this page when the official record changes or Treasury publishes its FY2026 annual report.