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President Donald Trump is directing nearly a dozen federal agencies that provide public-facing benefits and services to crack down on fraudulent payments.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday launching a task force to crack down on fraudulent payments across the federal government.
Trump told reporters at the White House that the amount of fraudulent spending the task force can recover is “country-changing.”
The recovery of these funds, he added, could help address a trillion-dollar national deficit and “lower your taxes substantially.”
“If we found half of the fraud that’s taking place in this country — and I think you have a chance of doing that — we would have much more than a balanced budget. That’s the kind of numbers you’re talking about. The theft is incredible,” Trump said.
The Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud.
“We’re going to see the first-ever effort in American history to reclaim the ultimately trillions of dollars that were stolen from taxpayers,” Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said.
White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf said the task force could recoup “potentially billions, or tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars to the American taxpayer.”
“This is going to launch a whole-of-government approach to rooting out the very serious problem of fraud in federally funded programs around the country,” Scharf said.
The executive order calls on nearly a dozen federal agencies to develop a national strategy “to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within federal benefit programs.”
Task force members include the departments of Treasury, Justice, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, as well as the Small Business Administration and the Office of Management and Budget.
Agencies on the task force will have 30 days to identify which of their benefit programs and transactions are most susceptible to fraud schemes, and to suggest fraud-prevention remedies.
The task force will focus on ensuring agencies do more to identify fraudulent payments before they’re paid out.
The executive order says that, in some cases, “proactively pausing certain types of funding” may be necessary until these types of controls can be put in place.
The Trump administration has already paused hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare payments to Minnesota, citing fraud concerns.
Vice President J.D. Vance will serve as chairman of the fraud task force. The head of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson, will serve as its vice chairman.
Vance told reporters that as “fraud czar,” he would “make sure that the benefits that ought, by right, go to American citizens, go to American citizens, and not to fraudsters.”
“We started to figure out one big hole that existed is that the agencies of the government weren’t actually talking to each other. Treasury would have evidence of financial fraud, but wasn’t talking to the Department of Justice about it. Health and Human Services had evidence of Medicaid fraud but wasn’t talking to the Department of Treasury about it,” Vance said.
Ferguson said the amount of fraud happening in federal programs is “unfair to all of us as taxpayers who pay for all this.”
“One of the things that we’re going to find is that, in a lot of these agencies, the previous administration was pretty lax about existing antifraud controls, and we’re going to expose that,” Ferguson said.
“Unbelievably lax,” Trump countered. “The last administration was fraudulent.”
The task force will focus on improving eligibility verification for federal benefits programs, and to “maximize enforcement.” The executive order calls for greater data-sharing between federal, state and local government agencies — especially between benefit-providing agencies and law enforcement agencies. The Trump administration, under an executive order last year, gave the Treasury Department access to certain data sets at the Social Security Administration in order to reduce improper payments to deceased beneficiaries.
The executive order said the agencies may also consider calling in “third-party contractors to maximize efficacy in detecting fraud.”
Trump said cracking down on fraud “is not a Republican or Democrat thing,” and that “if it’s in a red state, we’re going there too.” But he claimed that the concentration of fraud is “heavily” in states controlled by Democrats.
The executive order specifically references a fraud occurring in California, Illinois, New York, Maine, Minnesota and Colorado.
The goals of the fraud task force bear some resemblance to the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency, which promised to root out up to $2 trillion in fraudulent and wasteful spending.
Last December, former DOGE leader Elon Musk said DOGE was “somewhat successful,” having cut about $200 billion in “zombie payments.”
“If you guys can’t do it, we’ve got a problem, because nobody else will be able to do it,” Trump said.
The executive order brings into focus a “war on fraud” that Trump declared at his State of the Union address last month.
Following that speech, agencies said they’re stepping up efforts to address fraud.
Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at a White House event last month that the agency is crowdsourcing ideas from the public on how to crack down on Medicare fraud.
“Whatever ideas you have, we’re interested in. Our goal is to supercharge program integrity over the next six months,” Oz said.
Oz said the administration is also halting $259 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota, claiming that there is “widespread fraud” happening within the state.
The IRS recently announced the launch of a new web page that allows taxpayers to confidentially report suspected tax fraud, scams, tax evasion, or other tax-related illegal activities, as well as internal-facing improvements that will enhance how referrals are used to stop illegal activity.
The new web page consolidates multiple IRS fraud-reporting options into a single, centralized location, making it easier for taxpayers to report suspicious activity.
“Improvements to the IRS fraud reporting system make reporting suspected wrongdoing easier and simpler and will address historic challenges that had prevented the IRS from making maximum use of the referrals it receives,” said IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano said in a statement.
Cheryl Mason, the inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a statement that her office “is poised to play a critical role in the ‘War on Fraud.’”
“Through collaboration with VA, our law enforcement partners, and fellow inspector generals, the VA OIG is dedicated to detecting and preventing fraud targeting veterans and VA programs and operations, including healthcare, benefits, and internal corruption,” Mason wrote.
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