Senate Republicans are opening a new front in President Trump’s war on waste, fraud, and abuse, launching an Anti-Fraud Task Force aimed at stopping criminals from looting federal programs at taxpayer expense. The effort is being led by Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who says fraud has become “organized theft on a national scale.”
He is joined by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall, Tommy Tuberville, Katie Britt, Ashley Moody, Tim Sheehy, Pete Ricketts, Marsha Blackburn, and Ron Johnson. Their mission is to find the weak points in federal programs, expose the fraud rings exploiting them, and force Congress to take responsibility for the money it authorizes.
Sen. Johnson warned that federal fraud may range anywhere from $250 billion to $1 trillion a year with the nature of the federal bureaucratic goliath lending itself to widespread graft. And once that money is gone, taxpayers rarely get it back.
That is why Republicans are making the point that prevention — not after-the-fact prosecution — must be the priority. The Senate effort mirrors the Trump administration’s anti-fraud campaign led by Vice President JD Vance. Vance’s noble efforts have already flagged nearly $6.3 billion in government contracts tied to potentially fraudulent businesses and forced hundreds of companies to prove they are legitimate, introducing the alien concept of accountability into the system.
In May, it also withheld $1.4 billion in federal funding from home health and hospice providers suspected of wrongdoing. This is exactly what our lawmakers in Washington should be doing: protecting working Americans from fraudsters, grifters, and bureaucratic negligence, instead of taking orders from lobbyists and special interests to give themselves more power at our expense. The Trump administration is rapidly changing the culture in Washington D.C., and the days of treating taxpayer money like a slush fund are over.
