When fraud becomes partisan, taxpayers lose
Vice President JD Vance’s referral of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Justice Department is already being treated as another front in the nation’s partisan war. Vance says the referral is warranted because a Republican-led House Oversight Committee report alleges Minnesota officials knew for years about fraud in federally funded social services programs and failed to stop it. Walz and Ellison deny the allegations, with Ellison calling the referral a political stunt and warning that government powers should not be used to pursue political adversaries.
I’d imagine a conviction of either Walz or Ellison would be difficult in this case but that is merely an opinion without seeing the evidence. Intent can be hard to prove and there isn’t an overabundance of examples of high profile politicians being held accountable much these days.
Also, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has been in front of cameras this week talking about the SNAP fraud uncovered in red states, while blue states are refusing to cooperate with any investigations or hand over data. Rollins alleges that 200,000 deceased individuals are receiving SNAP benefits and half a million are receiving double benefits. Again, that’s just in red states that cooperated with the federal investigation.
The Cato Institute recently highlighted another wrinkle since the federal SNAP reforms meant to penalize high improper-payment rates may also create incentives for states to manipulate reported error rates instead of fixing the underlying problem. That matters because Republicans control federal policy design right now, too, and fraud prevention will not work if Washington writes rules that states can game and then blames only the states for gaming them.
Fraud in public programs shouldn’t be a Republican issue or a Democratic issue. I’ve harped on this before. It is a taxpayer issue, a trust issue, and a federalism issue. Many of these federal social services programs depend on cooperation: Washington provides funding and rules, states administer the programs, and local providers deliver services. States need to police this better but hyper-partisanship is either making many blue states disinterested in fraud or distrustful of the Trump administration in any way. Sadly, it might be more of the latter but the former can’t be totally discounted either.
Still, despite where one lands on the partisan chessboard, the biggest losers will not be the politicians trading accusations. They will be the citizens who paid for those programs and the people those programs were created to help. And the fraudsters, at least in many states, can continue to cash in on our generous programs.
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat