DAVID MARCUS: Florida senator’s wave of anti-fraud bills should be slam dunk

Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody has spent the last few months introducing and co-sponsoring a slate of legislation aimed at helping the Trump administration root out billions of dollars in fraud and theft of federal funds, and it is a welcome chance for the upper body to actually act.

Vice President JD Vance is spearheading the White House effort, targeting everything from Medicare fraud in Minnesota to fake hospice centers in Los Angeles, and the scale of the money lost, billions and billions of dollars, is staggering.

In March, Moody, who was Florida’s attorney general when she was appointed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis to finish the term of Marco Rubio after he left to serve as secretary of state, introduced the Stop Fraud in Medicaid Act. That law would give Medicaid Fraud Control Units the ability to expand investigations to people receiving fraudulent claims, not just those handing them out. She also introduced the Punishing Health Care Fraudsters Act, which would increase fines and penalties.

If that wasn’t enough, Moody has introduced the No Aid For Ghost Students Act, which targets a kind of grift we have heard less about, in which fraudsters submit fake or stolen identities to receive federal student aid benefits. Like Indians butchering a deer, these thieves use every part of the federal budget.

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I asked Moody why she chose to focus so much of her energy on the issue of fraud.

“I’ve spent most of my career tackling fraud one way or another,” she said. “As a prosecutor, judge and as Florida’s attorney general, it was part of the job.”

GOP leadership in the Senate would be wise to push Moody’s anti-fraud bills not just to the floor, but to the fore of the national conversation. Voters have been expressing anger at incumbent Republican senators for not getting things done; helping Vance fight fraud would help to soothe them.

“VP Vance, our whole government, and state AGs need every tool available to go after scammers and fraudsters, and I’ve got the toolbox ready with a slew of legislative proposals to enhance prosecutorial efforts,” Moody said. “Let’s get it done.”

So far, Vance has correctly laid out the two main victims of federal fraud: first, the taxpayer who is stolen from, and second, the people who really do need these services. But there is another argument that Republicans should be making.

The vast scale of this fraud, with some estimates as high as hundreds of billions of dollars, is such that not only would stopping it be justice served to criminals, it would also be a massive windfall for federal coffers.

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Maybe the Senate can succeed in some of the areas where the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency ran into roadblocks. After all, it is the Senate that passes the funding. Its members should also be the ones protecting it.

For conservative voters across the country who don’t want to pay for foreign-born fraudsters, Congress is the only hope we have, because once those federal dollars flow out the door to blue states and cities, it is Katie bar the door on ridiculous spending and fraud.

We have seen now in state after state what happens when the federal government punts its responsibility to protect federal dollars from fraud. Blue state governments just close their eyes and let it happen.

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Note that not a single Democratic state attorney general attended Vance’s meeting to discuss fighting fraud this week, just as anti-fraud hearings in Congress are often skipped by every Democratic member.

The biggest problem facing Republicans in the Senate right now, owing to the unwillingness of Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to attempt to nuke the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster, is that they are seen as getting nothing done. These bills are a chance to change that.

Thune operates by pinning bad votes on the Democrats, a very last-century tactic. But it’s what he does, and he hopes that the Save America Act is so popular that Democrats’ refusal to get on board will hurt them in November.

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The problem is that the Save America Act is something voters think about, while the massive fraud being committed, often by foreigners, is one that American voters feel deep in their gut.

It is one thing for Democrats to say during this election season that the Save America Act had this or that provision they didn’t like. It is quite another to say, “Let’s not be too hard on the Somali fraudsters.”

Since Trump took office for his second go-round, almost all the conservative wins have been his and his alone: the border, cleaning up D.C., Venezuela, etc. Only the One Big Beautiful Bill Act really involved Congress. But that can change.

It is time for Senate Republicans to join Vance in his fight against fraud, and Moody’s bills are a way to start doing that, right now.

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المصدر: Fox News — Latest