Fraudsters Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank With Your Money [WATCH]

Sen. Marsha Blackburn said government fraud and improper payments are draining hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars annually, citing Government Accountability Office estimates that she said reveal a systemic failure across federal programs nationwide.

In remarks focused on federal spending oversight, Blackburn said the scope of fraud extends far beyond any single state and represents a nationwide problem affecting virtually every major entitlement program.

“We know that this issue goes far from Minnesota and into every corner of the country and the Government Accountability Office and this report, I think, is significant,” Blackburn said.

Blackburn cited a GAO report estimating massive annual losses tied to fraudulent activity within government programs.

“It estimates that each year, each and every year that our government is losing between 233,000,000,520 $1 billion to fraud, fraudulent programs, fraudulent claims,” she said.

“So, think about that.”

She described those losses as the result of deliberate misconduct by individuals and organizations seeking to exploit taxpayer-funded systems.

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“You’ve got individuals and entities who willfully misrepresent themselves so that they can get taxpayer benefits, taxpayer dollars, and they are stealing up to $521 billion a year of your money,” Blackburn said.

According to Blackburn, even those figures may understate the true scale of the problem. She referenced the assessment of a former senior GAO official who believes annual fraud losses are substantially higher.

“And that 521 billion could be an underestimate,” she said.

“We have a former Assistant Director for the Government Accountability Office who believes the number is actually closer to $750 billion a year.”

Blackburn compared that estimate to major federal spending categories to illustrate the magnitude of the losses.

“So for context, that’s more,” she said.

“That 750 billion is more than the entire amount of money we spent on Medicaid in fiscal year 2024 that $750 billion estimate going to fraud that would have more than funded everything we spent on Medicaid, and it is Just shy of the $850 billion that we spend on defense.”

She emphasized that Medicaid and defense represent two of the largest components of the federal budget, yet fraud losses may rival or exceed those expenditures.

“Now those are some of the biggest components of our nation’s budget, Medicaid and defense,” Blackburn said.

“But yet we’re wasting the estimate is that money is being spent via fraud.”

Blackburn also noted that the GAO fraud estimates do not include losses caused by improper payments, which she described as a separate and ongoing drain on federal resources.

“Now these figures don’t include the taxpayer dollars that are lost through improper payments, these payments that go to the wrong person or maybe they exceed the correct amount,” she said.

She cited GAO data showing that improper payments have accumulated to trillions of dollars over the past two decades.

“Since fiscal year 03 the GAO estimates that the federal government has lost $2.8 trillion to improper payments,” Blackburn said.

According to Blackburn, recent data show that improper payments remain heavily concentrated in major health care programs.

“So you have to say, where is the money going when you look at these numbers,” she said.

“According to the GAO in fiscal year 2024, more than half, 85 billion, $85 billion were improper payments under Medicare and Medicaid.”

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