By Morgan Griffith, Representative
People in Virginia’s Ninth District and throughout our country believe that the government needs to be more efficient.
They are right!
Despite the federal government growing under the Biden Administration, a 2024 Pew Research poll reported that 56% of Americans agreed that the government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient.”
I share people’s frustration that our government needs to work better for America. Wasteful and fraudulent spending at the expense of the American taxpayer is always bad policy, bad governance and bad for our country.
Recently, frustration with wasteful and fraudulent federal spending has reached a new peak.
In Minnesota, investigations showed Somali fraudsters abusing state Medicaid programs to the tune of billions of dollars!
After 98 individuals were charged by the Department of Justice, more than 60 pled guilty or have been convicted!
It should be no surprise that after news broke of the unfolding large-scale Medicaid fraud scandal, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz opted not to run for reelection.
As part of the Trump Administration’s “War on Fraud,” Vice President JD Vance is leading an anti-fraud task force to crack down on such fraudulent operations.
In my role as Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, I have joined Committee efforts to root out fraudulent activity in Medicaid.
In response to the Minnesota scandal, I helped launch an investigation with our full Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman John Joyce.
We then expanded our investigation, seeking information from a slew of blue states that displayed concerning cases of Medicaid fraud in recent years.
These states include California, Massachusetts and New York.
As part of a separate inquiry, I helped push the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on getting answers to Medicare fraud in California.
Los Angeles County is the site of suspected large-scale Medicare fraud involving home health agencies and hospice agencies.
A California state auditor’s report noted a “rapid, disproportionate growth in the number of hospice agencies” in the County. Data from the report and HHS showed that more than 31% of United States hospice agencies were in Los Angeles County!
That number was so large, I asked my team to double check the facts, because I couldn’t believe that it would be 31% of all hospice agencies in the country.
But CBS News says there are roughly 1,800 hospices in Los Angeles County. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States has 5,800 hospice care agencies. Thus, 31% appears to be correct.
Following our push for HHS action in California, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Vice President Vance are executing on Republicans’ anti-fraud crusade.
More than 400 hospices and 23 home health agencies in California have been suspended. Legitimate California providers hailed the Trump Administration for working to hold fraudulent hospice and home health agencies accountable that have exploited seniors and their families.
I am committed to uncovering the extent to which fraudulent activity is present in federal programs.
Moving forward, I am confident we can continue this investigative work.
Wasteful spending and fraudulent abuse of taxpayer funds are not just in health care.
In the 118th Congress, I helped lead a separate investigation into the Biden-Harris “Green Bus Giveaway.”
This radical environmentalist effort sought to transition our school bus fleet to electric buses. To do so, Biden-Harris created a subsidized program that had little guardrails in place.
Accordingly, my Committee’s report found massive issues with the lack of sufficient program oversight. Seemingly, the Biden-Harris Administration was more interested in rushing funds to applicants than making sure the buses actually worked and were delivered on time.
I will continue to fight against such wasteful spending in our federal government.
Other actions I have taken include my support for Republicans’ 2025 rescissions package, cutting spending. It was the first successfully enacted rescissions package since 1992!
This package targeted “America Last” policies that sent millions to wasteful United Nations programs, government-funded overseas LGBTQ programs and climate activism.
Bold action is needed to confront the abundant waste, fraud and abuse in our government.
As a Congressional leader in the “Wars on Waste and Fraud,” I will continue to fight to ensure U.S. federal programs serve the American people, and not the bank accounts of fraudsters.
