Minnesota social services program fraud hits $9 billion under Democrat Tim Walz

As the details of Minnesota’s widescale social services fraud blew up on social media over the Christmas holidays, it was hard to miss the contrast between the reaction of Republicans and Democrats.  While Republicans were outraged, Democrats minimized and denied the very existence of the problem. 

With each new revelation of systemic fraud against the American taxpayer, we’re seeing a common denominator. Fraud protections have been deliberately bypassed in the pursuit of progressive political goals. Whether by incompetence or design, Democratic policies have turned the federal treasury into a piggy bank for fraudsters. 

American taxpayers have always been a fat target.  But the industrial scale of the fraud that has been revealed in the last year is coming through programs apparently designed with glaring vulnerabilities that seem engineered for exploitation. 

The scope of the theft is staggering. In Minnesota’s Medicaid and social services programs under Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, an estimated $9 billion or more has been stolen – potentially half of the $18 billion administered. Politicians waived audits, ignored whistleblowers and relaxed verification rules in favor of equity-based distributions, effectively inviting “fraud tourists” from out of state to set up shell companies.

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Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future scam alone saw $250 million vanish into fake meal programs for nonexistent kids, with funds laundered overseas or splurged on luxuries. That’s one state. 

On the federal level, the COVID-19 relief bonanza under former President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan incentivized fraud to obscene levels, with an estimated $420 billion in waste, fraud and improper payments — far exceeding initial Trump-era outlays. Programs like expanded unemployment insurance and PPP loans saw billions claimed by dead people, duplicate filers or fake businesses, thanks to waived ID verifications and rushed rollouts framed as equity measures for urban and minority voters.  

Democrats in Congress rejected Republican-proposed safeguards, arguing they would slow aid to those in need — effectively designing a trillion-dollar honeypot that attracted global scammers.

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Nowhere is the Democratic playbook for incentivizing fraud more evident than in the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration and border policies, which dismantled key safeguards and turned the asylum system into a magnet for fake claims and criminal exploitation.  

By reversing Trump-era measures like the Remain in Mexico policy and expanding catch-and-release practices, Democrats effectively minimized vetting requirements, allowing millions to enter with virtually no scrutiny — often just a notice to appear years later amid massive backlogs. This created a perverse incentive: economic migrants and cartels could game the system with bogus persecution stories, knowing weak credible fear standards and waived biometric checks would fast-track their release into the U.S., where they could work illegally or disappear.  

The result? Asylum grant rates plummeted from 51% in early 2024 to 19% by August 2025 as fraud overwhelmed the courts, with critics pointing to deliberate design flaws that prioritized rapid entry over security to appease progressive bases and expand potential voter demographics.

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Democrats seem to see fraud as the cost of doing business. As Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Steve Elkins explained during a 2025 legislative hearing on fraud prevention, “It’s literally impossible to completely eliminate all fraud unless you spend more money to try and eradicate the fraud than the fraud that’s occurring. … I don’t want to see us create an expectation that it’s possible to get zero fraud in programs like this.” 

While corruption and waste have long been bipartisan sins in Washington, the sheer magnitude and innovation in looting under Democratic leadership — particularly in the post-2020 era — stand out as unprecedented.

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Democrats in Congress rejected Republican-proposed safeguards, arguing they would slow aid to those in need — effectively designing a trillion-dollar honeypot that attracted global scammers.

Walz’s administration ignored whistleblowers and resisted reforms, turning what should have been targeted aid into an open invitation for organized crime — much of it tied to immigrant networks that form key Democratic voting blocs. This “innovation” in fraud facilitation extended beyond COVID, infecting autism services and home health billing, with new charges still emerging. It’s no coincidence that Walz avoided reelection amid the fallout; the real culprits are the policymakers who built a system so lax it practically begged to be looted. 

Republicans aren’t blameless, but the data shows this wasn’t “both sides” equally — Democratic-led expansions of welfare, aid and fundraising created loopholes on a scale that dwarfs historical precedents.

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The innovation here lies in scale and design: Democratic policies weaponize leftwing priorities like equity and speed to create exploitable systems, looting trillions while building voter loyalty through unchecked spending. Broader analyses, including OIG reports and Heritage databases, show fraud spiking with Democratic expansions of welfare and aid, not equally across parties.  

The real culprits aren’t just the fraudsters; they’re the architects in Washington who built these machines of waste. As DOGE dismantled fraudulent networks and clawed back funds, the lesson was stark: True reform means designing systems with fraud-proofing from the start, not as an afterthought. Until then, the treasury remains a target — not for both sides equally, but for those who innovate ways to raid it under the guise of good intentions. 

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