These days, we’re talking an awful lot about fraud. To be fair, it does feel as though fraud is everywhere.
There are the Minneapolis daycare centers, complete with misspelled signs, raking in public funds while providing no daycare services. There is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is apparently throwing money at anyone with a white hood. And there is the fraud scandal uncovered by Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak in Columbus, Ohio, in which Medicaid funds were raided by imaginary home healthcare providers.
Now, fraud is really important, and it’s incumbent on our federal, state, and local governments to investigate allegations of fraudulent behavior and ensure justice is served. But we also need to be wary that the subject of fraud can itself be a distraction from what matters immeasurably more.
AMERICA IS ON THE VERGE OF BANKRUPTCY. NOTHING WILL MATTER WHEN THE CRISIS HITS
First, it’s not enough for our government to simply react. When it comes to fraud involving taxpayer dollars, such as the various schemes run by Somali immigrants in Minnesota and Ohio, we can’t forget that these were allowed to happen. Even if heads roll within government and those convicted of wrongdoing face jail time, the hundreds of millions (if not billions) of stolen dollars will still remain stolen, leaving taxpayers with the inevitable bill. If we care about saving taxpayer dollars rather than simply seeking vengeance, the strategy must be to proactively address possible fraud before taxpayer funds disappear into the abyss, rather than allowing fraud to occur and then rushing to enact damage control.
Unfortunately, one big and cynical roadblock here is that politicians have no incentive to prevent fraud when there is so much political profit to be made for those seen to be prosecuting fraud after it has occurred. Why worry about the boring and thankless challenge of preempting fraud when you can gain so much attention, so much notoriety, and so much brand recognition from going to war with fraudsters down the line? And all it costs is a few billion dollars of someone else’s money!
Second, and more importantly, we cannot allow politicians to blind us from the big picture.
Again, fraud is really important. Given that every single taxpayer dollar is important, it’s crucial that waste of any scale is addressed. But that doesn’t make scale meaningless, and we cannot forget that while we spend our time on fraud that grabs headlines, there is a greater, broader, and deeper fraud being perpetuated by our own elected officials that is not only flying beneath the radar, but makes the next Somali benefits scam insignificant.
During the DOGE era, for example, we were sold the idea that fraud and government waste alone were to blame for our impending financial doom. Yes, we’re in unimaginable debt, but if we could cut waste, abuse, and fraud, we could balance the budget, pay down our debt, and enter into a new golden age!
Except … that’s absolute nonsense.
Currently, the U.S. national debt is well over $39 trillion, at more than 122% of American GDP. Looking at the federal budget, interest on this debt is larger than our defense spending, with only entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) ranking higher. The brutal fact is that fraud and waste are utterly insignificant when our federal government is taking out debt to spend almost $2 trillion on Medicare and Medicaid, and a further $1.6 trillion on Social Security every single year.
THINK TANK PROPOSES CAPPING ANNUAL SOCIAL SECURITY PAYMENTS AT $100,000
Frankly, the same federal government, with state officials rushing to mimic their sudden concern for fraud who are gleefully rushing to fight local fraud are doing so not just because it is important, but because it distracts us all from the fraud going on in Washington, D.C. While we are enraged by hundreds of millions stolen here and a few billion stolen there, the federal budget deficit increases by trillions every single year, and we keep our eyes clamped shut.
Yes, we must fight fraud, but if we are doing so based on a supposed concern for our limited resources, perhaps we should start worrying about the nation’s debt at least as much as we are worrying about Somali daycare centers?
Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist. You can find his work on Substack.