In a New York Post exclusive,
President Trump will sign an executive order [EO} Monday afternoon formally creating a benefits fraud task force chaired by Vice President JD Vance — the president’s designee to lead a nationwide “war on fraud.”
The Post reports,
Vance will join Trump in the Oval Office for the signing, underscoring the president’s continued emphasis on the project after highlighting a social-services scam scandal in Minnesota that has led to dozens of indictments, including for phony nutrition and autism care programs.
A document describing the looming order says “there is strong reason to believe similar vulnerabilities exist in California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and Colorado, where insufficient safeguards and weak oversight increase the risk of large-scale fraud.”
According to the Post,
The EO instructs the task force to develop a comprehensive national strategy against fraud impacting programs administered with state and local governments to provide housing, food, medical and financial assistance.
The order calls for the development of anti-fraud standards such as proof of identity and other documentation requirements, as well as audits.
Here in Minnesota, inclement weather forced the cancellation of this morning’s hearing of the state House Fraud Prevention committee. The committee was to have heard from the Office of Legislative Auditor (OLA) on their January report examining yet another program within the state Dept. of Human Services (DHS). The OLA concludes (p. 3),
The Behavioral Health Administration [BHA] did not comply with most requirements we tested and did not have adequate internal controls over grant funds.
What else is new? The BHA program within DHS distributes hundreds of millions of dollars per year in grants, with roughly half the money going to nonprofits.
The OLA expects to release a new special report on another important topic this spring,
Alleged Kickbacks in the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention Program
That’s the autism program. Should be a good one.
