The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that as much as $500 billion is stolen from federal programs each year due to fraud. That’s not an inconsequential sum, and every dollar of waste, fraud, and abuse is a dollar that isn’t going to an American in need.
Recent reports suggest that widespread fraud has taken root in Minnesota with as much as $9 billion or more stolen from federal programs since 2018, and prosecutors have indicted numerous individuals for a number of schemes. I hope that these individuals are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that we soon get to the bottom of what happened in Minnesota.
Over the past year, Republicans have been working hard to prevent the type of waste, fraud, and abuse that is now coming to light in Minnesota. Our landmark legislation, the Working Families Tax Cuts, contained a number of reforms to guard against abuse, focus federal dollars on those most in need, and hold states accountable for the federal funding they receive.
New measures in the law prevent noncitizens from receiving federal health care and nutrition benefits and refocus those programs to serving American citizens. It includes stronger work requirements for able-bodied, working-age adults without young children. It increases accountability, requiring states to check enrollees’ eligibility for Medicaid twice per year and taking aim at duplicative enrollment in federal health care programs, which is estimated to cost taxpayers $14 billion per year.
These are just a few of the commonsense reforms that Republicans enacted last year to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse. Unfortunately, while one would hope this would be a bipartisan issue, it’s not. Democrats panned the commonsense measures in the Working Families Tax Cuts as “cruel.” They have said little about the fraud scandal in Minnesota, and they have shown they are perfectly willing to allow waste, fraud, and abuse to continue in the Obamacare exchanges.
Although there is evidence of fraud in the exchanges and in the Biden COVID subsidies, which were especially susceptible to fraud, Democrats want to extend those subsidies without any reforms. A recent GAO report revealed that the ACA exchanges continue to enroll fake individuals, improperly pay out taxpayer-subsidized health insurance, and fail to ensure payment accuracy. The agency tested 24 accounts, and 23 of them were enrolled with false or no documentation to verify Social Security numbers, citizenship, or reported income. Then there are the 40 percent of enrollees in fully subsidized health insurance who never filed a claim. But despite these and other issues, Democrats voted numerous times to extend enhanced subsidies without a single reform.
We have a responsibility to taxpayers to be good stewards of their tax dollars and ensure that money goes toward its intended purpose. We need to have guardrails on federal programs to protect against nefarious schemes and bad actors and restore integrity to these programs. Republicans have made progress on that this past year, and our work continues.