Or, at least that’s what he’d like you to think. The Minnesota governor, having returned home from his failed Vice-Presidential bid, held a press conference this morning to announce new measures to combat the rampant, unchecked fraud being perpetrated against state welfare programs.
As with Covid, Walz vows to “turn the dial” against fraud! At the 12:40 mark, Walz signs a piece of paper. Walz begins taking questions at the 14:50 mark. At the 21:30 mark, Walz repeats a years-old, thoroughly-debunked lie about a Feeding Our Future court case outcome.
Keep in mind that today’s press conference could have been held on any day of the first six years of his governorship and been just as relevant. So why today, on a holiday-week Friday?
Fraud has been so widespread in social service programs under this governor that we had to create an entire ScandalTrackerTM just to keep up.
In terms of news, Walz today announced a new Executive Order to rearrange a few deck chairs, stating,
Governor Tim Walz today signed an executive order creating a centralized state fraud investigations unit operated by law enforcement at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
The flaw in this approach should be obvious: the problem lies less in investigation and prosecution of fraud ex post. Here, the Feds (FBI and U.S. Attorney) are doing able work. The problem lies more in fraud prevention, ex ante. You will recall the case of Feeding Our Future, where the bulk of the money lost (>$250 million) was lost after the investigation commenced. We need to empower bureaucrats to turn off the money spigot at the first hint of fraud, or blocking fraudsters access to programs ab initio.
As for the legislative program, Walz proposes, among other items, to,
Use artificial intelligence to detect and prevent fraud.
I’m not kidding. As was documented in the very first days of the Feeding Our Future scandal, state bureaucrats had figured out exactly, by hand, who the fraudsters were, before they stole their first dollar. What was lacking was the will to do anything about it.
Mostly, the Walz program consists of hiring dozens of new state employees, all of whom will become dues-paying members of Democrat-supporting public employee unions.
Walz vows to “give agencies expanded authority to stop payments,” but they have always had that authority and choose not to use it.
Walz also proposes tougher criminal penalties (20 percent higher!) on convicted fraudsters.
We at the Center back the idea of expanding the scope of the already-independently-elected State Auditor to combat fraud in state programs. As that office is up for election in 2026, candidates could compete on who will be better at fighting fraud.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reports that Walz sent an email to state employees this afternoon, advising,
it is particularly important that supervisors and agency leaders work diligently to build a culture of compliance in our agencies so that employees trust that their concerns are valued and taken seriously.”
It wasn’t important yesterday?