President Donald Trump is the first president in decades to make fighting fraud across the entire government a pillar of his domestic agenda. Though rarely a point of discussion in years past, fraud has remained in the political spotlight following a series of high-profile incidents that made the issue impossible to ignore.
Late last year, a City Journal report found Somalians in Minnesota were sending Medicare and Medicaid funds to terrorist group Al-Shabaab, while Nick Shirley exposed the “Quality Learing Center” and other shady childcare facilities statewide. When the scope of the issue became clear, Trump took decisive action.
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In March, the president established an anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance with staggering results just three months later.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has suspended funds to dozens of high-risk hospice and home health providers across the country. The Department of Justice has 8,000 active fraud cases and has already prosecuted several fraudsters. One grocery store owner in Lynchburg, Virginia, recently received a 33-month prison sentence for SNAP fraud. The Trump administration has withheld more than $260 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota alone until state officials agree to cooperate with federal fraud investigations.
States are not entitled to taxpayer-funded federal programs if they refuse to take the necessary steps to ensure program integrity.
Trump and Vance have refused to shy away from the uncomfortable truth of mass immigration’s contribution to increases in federal welfare fraud. Immigrant populations are disproportionately reliant upon welfare when they arrive, creating perverse incentives for government officials to direct federal dollars to this population in hopes of converting them into political supporters. In turn, large immigrant groups in states like Minnesota take advantage of easy-to-exploit loopholes in federal programs to direct more money to their communities.
The Trump administration is finding and stopping these schemes, but it is up to Congress to prevent them from happening in the future. Thus far, congressional Republicans have risen to the occasion and introduced several bills designed to prevent large-scale fraud, but those bills will ultimately need to be signed by the president for any lasting change to occur. The House-passed Stop Child Care Scams Act would be a great place for Senate Republicans to start.
The bill includes several reforms to federal childcare programs, including new requirements for states to track and report fraud as a separate category of improper payment, regular audits, funding restrictions for states that allow high rates of fraud, barring childcare fraudsters from federal food programs, and vice versa, along with several other modest reforms aimed at catching and preventing fraud in federal childcare programs.
Both Congress and the administration must also be willing to take a clear-eyed look at the endemic fraud in parts of Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP and overhaul the elements that are most susceptible.
Anti-fraud bills should earn broad support from both parties, but the reality is that most Democrats are perfectly content to let bad actors defraud the American public if it serves their desired political ends. They may claim to oppose fraud, but they are unwilling to work with the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to prevent it from happening.
Look no further than Minnesota, ground zero of Trump’s war on fraud, to see how Democrats handle large-scale fraud when they are in charge. State officials repeatedly ignored warning signs concerning the nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future years before its leaders were charged with scamming Americans out of $250 million in federal child nutrition funds. A report from the House oversight committee details how Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) and other state officials hand-waved serious red flags in Minnesota’s welfare programs rather than investigate the early warnings.
Contrast Walz’s approach with the actions of Trump and Vance. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud has worked diligently across agencies to root out fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, SNAP, and federal loan programs to ensure that hardworking Americans are not being defrauded by bad actors looking to scam the public.
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The scope and scale of fraud across the government are staggering, and there is much work that remains to be done. The Trump administration is the first in modern memory to be honest with the public about the problem and take action to stop the massive theft of taxpayer dollars.
Congress should follow suit.
Chip Wyatt is Heritage Action’s government relations director.
