Let me tell you something. I sit down every April with a shoebox full of receipts and a calculator from 2011 that still works, and I figure out what I owe this government down to the penny. I don’t get to “claim” I have four kids when I only have four kids. I don’t get to tell the IRS, “Trust me.” And yet somehow, according to the Vice President of the United States, the federal government has been running benefit programs where you can literally just say you have children and nobody checks. Nobody verifies. Nobody asks a single question.
$230 billion. That is what JD Vance’s fraud task force has uncovered since Trump took office. Two hundred and thirty billion dollars. And $55 billion in payments to suspected fraudsters has been stopped. I want you to hold those numbers in your head while I tell you the rest.
Vance sat down with Fox News Digital last week and said what every parent in this country who has ever filled out a WIC form already suspected. There is a pattern. He described it plainly: one person figures out you don’t even need to have children to collect benefits meant for children. You just claim you do. No verification required. Then word spreads through the community and the program gets drained. He specifically named Somali communities in Minneapolis, where independent journalist Nick Shirley exposed a network of daycare centers allegedly billing the government for services that never happened. The owner of one of those daycares was charged in a $4.6 million fraud scheme.
Now here is where I get hot under the collar. Vance said the thing that should make every mother in America furious: “When a new mom goes to apply for help for herself and her baby, the money isn’t there anymore.” He talked about autistic kids losing services because fraudsters who don’t even have children, much less autistic children, have already sucked the program dry.
Daniel Torok (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsDo you know what it is like to sit in a waiting room with a toddler who needs speech therapy and be told the program is out of funds? I do. And now I know why. It is not because we are broke as a country. It is because somebody in a cubicle in Washington decided that asking for proof of identity was somehow mean, and the money walked out the door.
Hundreds of hospice and home health agencies in Minnesota and California have had federal payments suspended. Nineteen defendants were just charged for schemes involving more than $4 million in Medicare and Medicaid claims. Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Dave Sunday wrapped up a 21-defendant case tied to $1.7 million in fraudulent claims. The FBI added two fugitives to its Most Wanted Fraudsters list amid a historic $6.5 billion healthcare takedown, per FBI Director Kash Patel.
This is not a rounding error. This is a system designed to be robbed.
And what does the other side do? They call Vance a “Fraud Czar” like that is an insult. Trump appointed him to this role in May and the man has been actually doing the work. He is working with Dr. Mehmet Oz at CMS. He is holding roundtables with state attorneys general. He told Fox that the most effective thing they have done is simply stop the money from going out the door in the first place, because once it is gone, “it’s very hard to get it back.”
Lorie Shaull from St Paul, United States (BY-SA) via wikimediaThat is the most honest thing a politician has said in years. And it should make you want to scream.
Because here is what I know as a mom who does her own research: if I ran my household budget the way the federal government runs benefit programs, my kids would be eating cereal for dinner every night and Child Protective Services would be at my door. But when the government loses $230 billion to fraud? They ask for more of your money and call you heartless for asking questions.
JD Vance is asking the questions. I suggest you start asking them too.