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A Vast Amount of Government Spending Is Consumed by Fraudsters

AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File

I don't know how many hundreds of billions of dollars are sucked up by fraud each year, but even the amount of proven fraudulent activity is absolutely mind-blowing. 

The fraud isn't even particularly sophisticated, and often the bureaucrats who run the programs and many of the politicians who vote for them are aware that the fraud is happening. The bureaucrats have no incentives to stamp it out, and often, they face consequences for trying. And the politicians? While rarely directly benefiting while in office, they have built their careers on using the government's money to build coalitions that benefit themselves, their party, and their clique. 

It would be naive to believe that fraud can be entirely stamped out. Combine human nature, lots of resources, little oversight, and few incentives to stop fraud, and the potential for huge rewards and fraud will be inevitable. Societies with only modest amounts of fraud are exceptionally rare and built around hard-won social trust. Corruption is the norm, not the exception. 

But the United States has been one of those societies, along with a few European countries, much of the Anglosphere in recent decades, and a few Asian societies, perhaps. 

Ironically, for a time, at least, high social trust makes corruption easier than ever and accessible to the masses should they choose to exploit it. Unsurprisingly, a lot of that fraud has been associated with migrants from low-trust societies, where it was insane to reject any opportunity to be corrupt. The only alternative to being the predator was to be the prey. 

Here in Minnesota, the massive corruption that has sucked up billions of dollars in the past few years has been centered around an alliance between the Democratic Party and the recent Somali migrants. Governor Walz, the Minnesota Department of Education, DFL-associated operatives, and Somali leaders have been raiding the piggy bank of our social programs to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at least. Keith Ellison, our Attorney General, and Omar Fateh, the Somali politician who almost displaced Jacob Frey as Mayor of Minneapolis, were key players (and his family has been involved in both corruption and voter fraud). 

Our food programs, autism care, day care, and God knows what else exist to funnel money to corrupt NGOs. A chunk of the money even goes to fund Somali rebels and gangs. 

The only reason this has penetrated the public consciousness at all, and to the extent it has, it is a vague awareness, is because the US Attorney has been slowly chipping away at the corruption. Everybody in the state, at least everybody who has real power, either benefits from it or doesn't want to touch it. It is a third rail.

Of course, it's not a Minnesota problem. It's pervasive in our society. SNAP is filled with fraud. Social Security is filled with fraud. Everywhere the government regulates or spends money is now a fraud machine. Think of how much has been poured into stupid rail projects, or especially all the climate grifting. It all adds up to trillions. 

DOGE revealed that the federal government paid every invoice it got, even if there was no accounting for what exactly was being purchased. Send in an invoice, and it was paid. For the bureaucrats, it made sense—every challenge led to massive headaches, while nobody complained if the money went out the door. The path of least resistance was to sign the checks. 

Six percent (or more) of the GDP and almost 10% of all employment is in the NGO sector, and almost all of that is subsidized or completely funded by the federal, state, and local governments. When 10% of the workforce is subsidized by the government, you can be sure that you have a built-in voting bloc for Democrats. 

In other words, the more money you pour into organizations that are rife with corruption, the more power flows to you. 

Given all this, it's a minor miracle that anything gets done by the government.

If you ever wondered why the Democrats went absolutely insane over DOGE, the answer is not complicated. Government is their industry. It funds a massive infrastructure that props up their power. 

The saving grace in America is that we still have a very vital free market sector of our economy, which spins off huge quantities of wealth. Unfortunately, the rise of socialism is taking aim and wants to kill it and live off the carcass as long as possible. 

We've watched that movie before, and it doesn't end well. 

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Beege Welborn 11:20 AM | November 17, 2025
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David Strom 10:00 AM | November 17, 2025
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