Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ended his campaign for re-election, a stunning reversal and likely the end of the political career of a man who many pundits projected would be the Democratic nominee for president as early as 2028.
But if a once-popular governor can be toppled by widespread welfare fraud, where does that leave other Democratic presidential hopefuls?
The revelations of staggering levels of fraud in Minnesota — and Walz’s preemptive exit from the big stage — should send a chill down the spines of Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, and JB Pritzker, who are likely sitting on powder kegs of fraud themselves. What are the odds that Tim Walz is an outlier among blue-state governors with the exact same political philosophy and ideology? Unlikely.
Federal prosecutors allege more than $9 billion in Minnesota Medicaid dollars were stolen by scammers primarily from the state’s Somali community, an enormous sum, equivalent to roughly three-quarters of Somalia’s GDP. Investigations are ongoing, and the real total loss may be even higher.
Welfare programs are an enormous money pot that inevitably attracts scammers. And the bigger the pot, the bigger the potential payoff for thieves. With state budgets the size of those in California, Illinois, and New York, not to mention Democrats’ general posture toward welfare expansion, it would be truly shocking if there were less fraud in those larger states.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requested data from the states on who is receiving food stamps early last year, including identifying information like Social Security numbers and, importantly, immigration status. The Trump administration has previously discovered that more than one million people were illegally receiving Medicaid in multiple states — and it’s likely the same with food stamps and SNAP benefits. Individual states are not able to detect this kind of fraud: only the federal government can find it by comparing recipients across the states.
But Democrats have refused to help the Trump administration find fraud. In fact, in July, 22 blue states sued to block the Trump administration from requiring the data. Democrats want the federal government to pay for food stamps without knowing who is receiving them.
Tim Walz and the other 21 governors have all seen the information they are currently hiding from the feds. In the absence of transparency from these elected officials, federal investigators, journalists, and citizens of goodwill all need to keep digging until the American people get the truth and law enforcement can bring fraudsters to justice.
Food stamp fraud is a known fact. According to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), more than $10 billion in the food stamp program is wasted every year — more than 10% of the program. Some blue states have even higher error rates: Massachusetts and D.C. overpay by an average of more than 13% — and New York and New Jersey aren’t far behind at more than 12%. That means that one out of every eight dollars in these states is wasted — and this is just the waste, fraud, and abuse that we know about.
Nearly every Democrat-run state in America also uses an accounting gimmick called Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility, or BBCE, to hide its own erroneous payments from the federal government. BBCE means that if someone receives a non-monetary TANF benefit, like a brochure or the number to a welfare agency hotline, the state assumes that they qualify for food stamps, too, without bothering to check their assets to see if they are actually eligible. The result is an explosion in the welfare state, costing taxpayers more than $11 billion per year, with the benefits going to people with liquid assets well above the limits set in federal law.
The good news is that, thanks to a new law signed by President Trump, states with high error rates can no longer waste federal tax dollars with impunity. States with food stamp payment error rates over six percent are now legally required to start paying back a small part of the cost of the program. Left-wing Massachusetts could owe more than $250 million per year. Deep-blue Maryland may be on the hook for more than $300 million. This is a great first step, and not only will it help repay federal taxpayers, but it will also encourage states to finally get their act together and stop wasting money.
As the old story goes, criminals rob banks “because that’s where the money is.” And there are no bigger pots of money than the federal treasury and the bloated budgets of blue states. Attorney General Bondi and investigators across the country are beginning to look at where the real money is — and the fallout could bring down the entire top-tier slate of 2028 Democratic presidential nominees.
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Adam Gibbs is the communications director for the Foundation for Government Accountability.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
