President Donald Trump is directing nearly a dozen federal agencies that provide public-facing benefits and services to crack down on fraudulent payments.<\/p>\n
Trump signed an executive order<\/a> on Monday launching a task force to crack down on fraudulent payments across the federal government.<\/p>\n Trump told reporters at the White House that the amount of fraudulent spending the task force can recover is \u201ccountry-changing.\u201d<\/p>\n The recovery of these funds, he added, could help address a trillion-dollar national deficit and \u201clower your taxes substantially.\u201d<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cIf we found half of the fraud that\u2019s taking place in this country \u2014 and I think you have a chance of doing that \u2014 we would have much more than a balanced budget. That\u2019s the kind of numbers you\u2019re talking about. The theft is incredible,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n The Government Accountability Office estimates<\/a> that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to see the first-ever effort in American history to reclaim the ultimately trillions of dollars that were stolen from taxpayers,\u201d Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said.<\/p>\n White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said the task force could recoup \u201cpotentially billions, or tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to launch a whole-of-government approach to rooting out the very serious problem of fraud in federally funded programs around the country,\u201d Scharf said.<\/p>\n The executive order calls on nearly a dozen federal agencies to develop a national strategy \u201cto stop fraud, waste, and abuse within federal benefit programs.\u201d<\/p>\n Task force members include the departments of Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, as well as the Small Business Administration and the Office of Management and Budget.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n Agencies on the task force will have 30 days to identify which of their benefit programs and transactions are most susceptible to fraud schemes, and to suggest fraud-prevention remedies.<\/p>\n The task force will focus on ensuring agencies do more to identify fraudulent payments before they\u2019re paid out.<\/p>\n The executive order says that, in some cases, \u201cproactively pausing certain types of funding\u201d may be necessary until these types of controls can be put in place.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has already paused hundreds of millions of dollars<\/a> in Medicare payments to Minnesota, citing fraud concerns.<\/p>\n Vice President J.D. Vance will serve as chairman of the fraud task force. The head of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, will serve as its vice chairman.<\/p>\n Vance told reporters that as \u201cfraud czar,\u201d he would \u201cmake sure that the benefits that ought, by right, go to American citizens, go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe started to figure out one big hole that existed is that the agencies of the government weren\u2019t actually talking to each other. Treasury would have evidence of financial fraud, but wasn\u2019t talking to the Department of Justice about it. Health and Human Services had evidence of Medicaid fraud but wasn\u2019t talking to the Department of Treasury about it,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n Ferguson said the amount of fraud happening in federal programs is \u201cunfair to all of us as taxpayers who pay for all this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that we\u2019re going to find is that, in a lot of these agencies, the previous administration was pretty lax about existing antifraud controls, and we\u2019re going to expose that,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cUnbelievably lax,\u201d Trump countered. \u201cThe last administration was fraudulent.\u201d<\/p>\n The task force will focus on improving eligibility verification for federal benefits programs, and to \u201cmaximize enforcement.\u201d The executive order calls for greater data-sharing between federal, state and local government agencies \u2014 especially between benefit-providing agencies and law enforcement agencies. The Trump administration, under an executive order last year<\/a>, gave the Treasury Department access to certain data sets at the Social Security Administration in order to reduce improper payments to deceased beneficiaries.<\/p>\n The executive order said the agencies may also consider calling in \u201cthird-party contractors to maximize efficacy in detecting fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump said cracking down on fraud \u201cis not a Republican or Democrat thing,\u201d and that \u201cif it\u2019s in a red state, we\u2019re going there too.\u201d But he claimed that the concentration of fraud is \u201cheavily\u201d in states controlled by Democrats.<\/p>\n The executive order specifically references a fraud occurring in California, Illinois, New York, Maine, Minnesota and Colorado.<\/p>\n The goals of the fraud task force bear some resemblance to the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency, which promised to root out up to $2 trillion in fraudulent and wasteful spending.<\/p>\n Last December, former DOGE leader Elon Musk said DOGE was \u201csomewhat successful,\u201d<\/a> having cut about $200 billion in \u201czombie payments.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you guys can\u2019t do it, we\u2019ve got a problem, because nobody else will be able to do it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n The executive order brings into focus a \u201cwar on fraud\u201d that Trump declared at his State of the Union address last month.<\/p>\n Following that speech, agencies said they\u2019re stepping up efforts to address fraud.<\/p>\n