When we give a significant portion of our annual income to various levels of government, we have every right to expect that this money will be used properly. The government’s primary role is to protect the liberty and property of taxpayers. We should expect our government employees to safeguard our funds against massive fraud. Unfortunately, recent events suggest that this has not been the case, but there is a great deal of hope those days are coming to an end, compliments of, naturally, the Trump administration.
We have been closely monitoring the initial efforts of Vice President JD Vance’s fraud task force, and the results are beginning to emerge—and they are quite impressive. A “First on Fox” segment on Fox News provides some key statistics:
The anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance has suspended 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies suspected of fraud in Los Angeles, with a total fraud estimate of more than $600 million.
The number of suspensions is roughly a 539% increase from the 70 reported by Fox News Digital at the beginning of April.
“Where there is fraud, the task force will find it,” a spokesperson for Vance told Fox News Digital. “We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them.”
That’s great news, but we have a lingering suspicion that this is only the tip of the iceberg. There is little doubt that this type of fraud occurs widely, ranging from a few hundred dollars here and there to, as we see in this case, potentially millions or even billions. Hell, even members of the Trump administration have suggested that if Vance and his team managed to clean up even most of the fraud, we’d no longer have an annual budget deficit.
Also, the task force is right to go after big fraud first:
A White House official doubled down on Vance and the task force’s commitment to root out fraud, and sent a stark warning to those suspected of fraudulent activity.
“To all fraudsters: good luck trying to hide from the Vice President’s task force,” the White House official told Fox News Digital. “[The anti-fraud task force is] reviewing and pursuing every possible lead. These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase.”
The rising numbers add to the $259.5 million in Medicaid funds to Minnesota that Vance and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced plans to block in February.
This is “a good start,” indeed, but that’s all it is.
Here’s a significant concern arising from all of this: What will happen in 2028? The ongoing fraud investigations and the notable withdrawal of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz from his re-election campaign are happening because President Donald Trump ordered these actions. Previous Democrat administrations seemed content to overlook such issues, and past Republican administrations also did not express much concern. However, there has been a clear and alarming increase in fraud over the last few years, and now it’s much to big of a problem to simply ignore.
So the question becomes, if we somehow get stuck with a Democrat as president, will these fraud investigations continue? Will a Democrat jail their most reliable donors? Of course not.
