Written by Marsha Blackburn
U.S. Senator
Washington, D.C. – The American people expect the government to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars. When fraudsters steal from publicly funded programs, they steal from every American and divert resources from those who truly need them.
Yet for years, Democrats—from state legislatures all the way up to the White House—loosened guardrails that prevent fraud and turned a blind eye to criminals who exploited these vulnerabilities. Under President Donald Trump, this rampant abuse is coming to an end.
So far, the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President JD Vance, has uncovered an estimated $260.7 billion in stolen taxpayer dollars. Of that, $58.9 billion has already been recovered through indictments, settlements, and civil monetary penalties. The Task Force’s reforms are also stopping an estimated $72 billion in fraudulent spending each year from going out the door.
This is an astounding victory for the American people—and our work is just getting started. Last week, Vice President Vance released a pledge to protect Americans from fraud, which I was glad to support. Among its commitments: protecting vulnerable Americans from predatory scammers, ensuring taxpayer-funded programs serve law-abiding citizens, making certain fraudsters face justice, and deporting every illegal alien who steals from the American people.
Republicans are upholding these commitments every single day. Last week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced that his team identified 189,000 people receiving subsidized Obamacare coverage who were deceased or had already enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP. Ending these improper subsidies will save taxpayers approximately $1.5 billion over the next year while ensuring no American loses coverage.
By contrast, the Joe Biden administration stopped checking for duplicate enrollments altogether, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to be enrolled in multiple taxpayer-funded health insurance programs at the same time. When the Trump administration cleared this backlog last year, it ended duplicate Obamacare subsidies for 551,000 people already on Medicaid.
Last week, the Justice Department’s National Fraud Enforcement Division also announced the results of its first-ever National Tax Enforcement Surge: prosecutorial actions against 76 defendants whose alleged and proven schemes sought more than $490 million from the U.S. Treasury. Thirty-five U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the country took part, including those for the Western and Middle Districts of Tennessee.
Many of the fraudsters stealing taxpayer funds are foreign nationals, and the administration is taking decisive action to ensure these criminals never exploit the generosity of the American people again. Among those charged in the surge are three Mexican nationals accused of stealing more than $74 million from the U.S. Treasury. According to the indictment, the aliens obtained Mexican identification documents in other people’s names, used them to secure IRS taxpayer identification numbers, filed fraudulent returns in those names, and cashed over 16,000 refund checks.
Once they have served their sentences, those convicted of such crimes should never again have the opportunity to steal from the American people. That’s why I introduced the Fraud Accountability Act to make clear that fraud is a deportable offense under the Immigration and Nationality Act and that any deportable offense can lead to denaturalization. Alongside several Republican colleagues, I also launched the Senate Anti-Fraud Task Force to ensure the upper chamber is working hand in hand with the administration to root out waste, fraud, and abuse across federal programs.
For years, fraudsters operated with impunity. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, these criminals are facing the full force of the law—and we won’t stop until every single one of them is held accountable.
