Speaking during an appearance on CNN, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a far-left Democrat from the Bay Area who is currently pushing for a wealth tax on billionaires in the state, admitted that the Golden State’s budget needs to be audited because it is almost certainly full of “fraud and waste” to the tune of billions of dollars.
As background, California has faced increasingly loud accusations of fraud, waste, and corruption, as it is spending massive amounts of money and has onerous taxes, yet is still in a massive deficit and claims to need to raise taxes yet further. Additionally, the huge reports of fraud from Minnesota have led many to believe that blue state fraud is massive beyond belief and needs to be dealt with.
Such was the context of Rep. Ro Khanna’s discussion about the matter on Tuesday, December 30, during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source”, durng which he admitted that even the official inspector general had admitted there to be “billions of dollars of fraud and waste.”
Beginning by commenting on that report from the Gavin Newsom-appointed inspector general and what it has found, Khanna said, “Well, look, it’s a serious report. It was the governor’s own inspector general who said that there are billions of dollars of fraud and waste.”
Continuing, he noted that the fraud and waste problem has become so massive that he is actively hearing about it from his constituents, who fear that higher taxes will be used to pay for just more and more fraud, saying, “And I heard about it from people in my district. They were saying, Ro, you’re calling for higher taxes, we’re maybe happy to pay those higher taxes, but we want to know — higher taxes on the very wealthy, I should clarify — but we want to know that that tax dollar is not going to get wasted.”
Further, he admitted that a slew of programs, from Covid relief to infrastructure building, have been pilfered by legions of fraudsters, saying, “And there was fraud and waste with COVID. There’s been fraud and waste on some of the eligibilities of these programs. There’s been fraud and waste on some of these infrastructure programs.”
Adding to that, he then desperately tried, and largely failed, to frame the corruption and fraud issue as being not just a Democrat issue but rather one faced by both red and blue states, saying, “So all I said is I’m going to work…on a bipartisan basis on the Oversight Committee to understand what that budget is, it should be audited, and make sure we’re getting rid of fraud and waste, whether it’s in California or whether it’s in a red state.”
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Concluding, the California politician claimed that the fraud issue isn’t a political one, telling CNN, “This should not be a political issue, and it has nothing to do against any particular Democratic politician or Republican politician. It’s making sure that the American people get the receipts for what they’re paying.”
Watch him here: