Trump’s war on fraud is political genius 

President Trump is serious about fraud. As he should be — nothing more quickly undermines faith in our government, or enthusiasm for our safety net, than evidence that taxpayers are being ripped off.  

And, boy, are they being ripped off. 

During the State of the Union address on Tuesday, the president said, “I am officially announcing the war on fraud, to be led by our great Vice President [JD] Vance. He’ll get it done.” 

He also said, “And [if] we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It’ll go very quickly. That’s the kind of money you’re talking about.” 

That is optimistic, for sure. Our deficit this year is estimated at nearly $2 trillion — two thousand billions of dollars. Welfare fraud is almost certainly less than half that amount. But Trump is still right that the amount of government payments being hijacked by crooks is stunning. 

In 2024, when Joe Biden was still president, the Government Accountability Office reported that “the federal government could lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.” In other words, up to half a trillion dollars was being stolen each year! That estimate was based on a survey of spending done in the years between 2018 and 2022, in the wake of the massive COVID relief programs authorized by Congress. 

Note that this horrendous sum does not include “improper payments”; that’s a whole different (and also enormous) category, according to the Government Accountability Office.  

GAO reported that “No area of the federal government is immune to fraud” and suggested that “a government-wide approach is required to address it.” That suggestion went unheeded. 

Theft undermining our welfare programs is not new — it has just gotten worse.

During the COVID years,........

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