The Trump administration announced another step in its efforts to identify fraud in government programs and, of equal importance, hold states, organizations, and individuals responsible for these crimes. The governors of the affected states are complaining about enforcement, when they should be angry about massive cheating under their noses.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services placed a hold on more than $867 million in scheduled Medicaid payments for California and more than $200 million for Minnesota, on top of $1.3 billion and $259 million withheld from those states, respectively, earlier this year.

Opponents of the administration’s actions in combating entitlement fraud characterize the president’s endeavor as vindictive and politically motivated. Those complaints are unjustified for multiple reasons.

For starters, the claim of political spite is morally unfounded. The administration’s motive for rooting out fraud has nothing to do with whether it is good policy or a just cause. Fraud is wrong, obviously, and the government has a strict responsibility to ensure that it is not allowing people to steal other people’s money through any means, including via taxpayer-funded programs.

One of the (very few) main duties of government is to protect people’s property rights. If a president sees fraud prevention as working to his political advantage, we should be overjoyed that the system is functioning properly.

The only way to prevent crimes is to uncover violations and punish the perpetrators. It is obvious that merely telling people not to cheat “the government”—which involves robbing from their taxpaying neighbors—will not eliminate the theft. And if state governments can easily get away with........

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