POLITICS: From Somali scams to phantom patients, Democrats keep defrauding us

Democrats have a fraud problem. A big one.

And the past few weeks have shown just how much it costs Americans.

In November, news broke that Democrats in Minnesota had allowed fraudsters — mostly in the immigrant Somali community — to steal more than a billion dollars from state-managed federal welfare programs.

They raided a housing fund, child-nutrition programs and most of all Medicaid.

Minnesota Democrats knew about the massive theft, but they let it happen, fearing they’d lose votes if they tried to stop it.

Now, an even larger national scandal is unfolding.

It centers on the Democrats’ signature health-care law — the disaster known as Obamacare.

Last week the Government Accountability Office announced the results of a test it had launched back in 2024, when Joe Biden was president.

The federal watchdog created fake consumers and applied for Obamacare plans in their names.

Almost all the fictitious applicants were able to enroll — and all who did qualified for federal subsidies.

In other words, they got the green light to steal from taxpayers.

This is a massive indictment of Obamacare — and of the Democrats who defend it at every turn.

This year, taxpayers will fork over $148 billion to cover premiums for more than 22 million people.

How many of those people aren’t even real?

How many are getting more money than they should because they falsified their application data?

Just how rampant is fraud in our federal benefits and welfare systems — fraud that the federal government clearly isn’t doing enough to identify, much less fight?

The deeper you dig, the worse Democrats look.

When Barack Obama was president, the same federal watchdog found that nonexistent people routinely got coverage and subsidies.

In 2016, Obama’s final year, his administration still hadn’t designed basic eligibility safeguards for the health-care system he called his greatest achievement.

Biden made the fraud crisis worse when he worked with Democrats in Congress to temporarily expand Obamacare subsidies, creating an even greater incentive to steal from taxpayers.

The IRS has found that 60% of those getting Biden’s bigger subsidies misreported their incomes to boost their benefits.

What’s more, insurance brokers signed up huge numbers of people without their knowledge, getting  a $1,000 commission for each family they enrolled.

In November, a jury convicted one insurance broker over his company’s $233 million Obamacare-fraud scheme.

Democrats could hardly have encouraged more fraud if they tried.

At this point, it’s worth asking: Is Obamacare about health coverage, or is it just a cover for those stealing from taxpayers?

For that matter, is fraud the Democrats’ goal, given how much they’ve incentivized it — and how little they’ve done to stop it?

It’s up to Republicans to protect the taxpayers and root out this flagrant abuse.

The first and most important thing they can do is let Biden’s expanded Obamacare subsidies expire at the end of this year, as the law establishing them provided.

They’re facing intense pressure to vote on making them permanent, with Democrats screaming from the rafters that these extra handouts are essential for affordable health care.

But they aren’t: Without them, the typical Obamacare enrollee will pay just $3 a week more for platinum-level coverage.

More to the point, the expanded subsidies are fraud-ridden through and through, as the GAO has proven.

Any Republican who votes to extend them is voting to extend the rampant theft of taxpayer money.

But letting this foolish handout expire is only Step 1.

Next, Republicans need to fundamentally reform how the government checks eligibility for every welfare program, from Obamacare to Medicaid to food stamps and beyond.

The only acceptable policy is one that verifies a recipient’s eligibility before they get a cent of taxpayer funding.

That means checking applicants’ names and identifying details against birth records, death records, employment records, prison records and every other government data source.

It means receiving — and reviewing — all documentation before a person is approved for taxpayer support.

If someone can’t clear these hurdles, they shouldn’t get a check.

This is basic good-government procedure, and recent weeks have shown it’s badly needed at both the state and the federal level.

It should have happened decades ago.

Instead, Democrats have built a welfare system so careless that it fritters away billions of dollars a year on fraudsters.

That must end now.

Democrats may own this debacle, but Americans are paying for it.

We shouldn’t fork over another dollar to anyone who doesn’t deserve it — or doesn’t exist.

Jonathan Ingram is vice president of policy and research at the Foundation for Government Accountability.