In February 2025, just as the Trump Administration was getting going and DOGE was revving up, the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) held a hearing in which it brought in several experts who exposed the disastrously high levels of fraud inside the government’s spending.
That hearing, appropriately titled “The War on Waste: Stamping Out the Scourge of Improper Payments and Fraud,” was focused on how both Congress and DOGE could more effectively investigate the hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars wasted annually on improper payments and fraud.
One of the witnesses brought in was Dawn Royal, a certified welfare investigator and the Director of United Council on Welfare Fraud. She explained how the career bureaucrats within the federal spending ecosystem don’t care about fraud so long as it doesn’t injure their political interests.
Explaining that, Ms. Royal noted that those who theoretically would be investigating fraud don’t do so and just downplay what fraud they find so that the pro-spending political agenda can be furthered. She said, “Investigators have also found themselves at odds with the career bureaucrats who recite watered down facts about fraud in order to promote their political agendas.”
Continuing, she gave an example of that, noting that obscene levels of fraud within the SNAP food stamp program are being ignored. She said, “Specifically, we can look to the career bureaucrats who have historically claimed that the fraud rate in SNAP is less than 1%. The disregard for the value of integrity is evidenced by the less than 1/20 of 1% of the SNAP budget spent on the prevention, detection, and prosecution of fraud…”
Explaining that the bureaucrats are trying to just enlarge and protect their spending programs rather than wisely steward the taxpayer dollars they are given control over, she said, “Sadly, it is already apparent that career bureaucrats are not being totally transparent as they attempt to protect spending and broken programs.”
Later on, Ms. Royal explained that a few small changes would help massively in rooting out fraud. She said, beginning her suggestions, “There are things this Committee can do to help the investigators fighting the war on fraud. Number one, eliminate self-attestation in the application process for all programs. Number two, funding for technology that includes identity verification tools that will help prevent fraud. The current pay and chase model is not sustainable.”
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She added, “Number three, immediately implement the National Accuracy Clearinghouse, the NAC will provide data to states to prevent duplicate participation in all of the social welfare programs. And four, allocate direct funding with mandates restricting the use of the funding to the prevention, detection, and prosecution of fraud.”
Also commenting on the matter of rooting out fraud was Haywood Talcove, the Chief Executive Officer of LexisNexis Risk Solutions for Government, who said, commenting on the matter of certifying payments, “There’s no excuse for the government to lag if we do the following. Number one, implement identity verification on the front end. Criminals should never receive a dime. Eliminate self-certification. No more honor system for billion-dollar programs. And continuous auditing. Keep verifying because criminals never stop adapting.”
Watch Rep. Brandon Gill comment on the hearing here: