Under Walz, Minnesota defrauded hundreds of millions of people, even after warnings about “pervasive” errors

by John Solomon and Steven Richards

As his administration ramped up government handouts during the pandemic and border crisis, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was warned that his team did not have adequate protections for the taxpayer money it was sending out the door to nonprofits and workers.

In fact, auditors only announced in February last year that they had discovered “widespread non-compliance” in the Walz administration, where grant management policies “indicated systemic problems with grant oversight.”

Months later, the fruits of such financial mismanagement came to airy with the revelation that 70 people had conspired to steal $250 million from the state’s Feeding Our Future program, which was designed to provide food for impoverished children during the pandemic, in one of the largest COVID-19-related frauds uncovered nationwide. Auditors said the Minnesota Department of Education “should have taken additional steps to verify information provided in support of sponsorship applications from high-risk applicants.”

Walz defended his administration, saying no public officials were “implicated” in the crime.

“There is not a single government official who was involved in doing anything that was illegal. They simply did not do as much due diligence as they should have,” Walz said, according to MPR News. “So there have been changes in leadership of these organizations since then, and we have new leadership, certainly at the Department of Education.”

There were a few people convicted in this scheme by federal prosecutors in June. Some people allegedly opened entities that participated in the food program to fraudulently appropriate funds intended for feeding children.

A few weeks later, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Walz’s condition lost $430 million in overpaid unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Although she had lower percentage undue payments than many other states, and the sheer amount of losses has alarmed some members of the state legislature, especially Republicans.

The overpayment is a continuation of “a long pattern of fraud and waste led by Minnesota Democrats,” said House Minority Leader Gonzalez. “…These are dollars that should be going to people who really need them, and those responsible for this fraud and waste must be held accountable. Minnesotans deserve better than a governor who thinks ‘not the worst’ is a victory.”

While Republicans have tried for years to draw attention to Walz’s financial management, their concerns have often gone unnoticed by the national news media. But the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor has continued to count losses, are now approaching $1 billion since 2019, according to Demote, and will certainly become an issue in the final days of the 2024 presidential election now that Walz has been selected to be Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ vice president.

“He increased spending in Minnesota by almost 40 percent in one year, had a $17 billion surplus, spent every bit of that in one year and put Minnesota on a path of steady tax increases of about eight to ten billion dollars and steady spending in every area,” former congresswoman and presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show Tuesday.

“I have been involved in government for many years and have never seen a more radical agenda than what Tim Walz has implemented here in Minnesota,” she added.

Walz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Only news.

Walz’s record is ripe for attack because auditors have repeatedly found that the state could have easily detected and stopped the fraud long before the federal government intervened, a point underscored in the final investigation into fraud involving a $250 million federal food program and other a recent audit found that 41% of Frontline Worker Pay beneficiaries could not be verified as real.

“The Department of Labor and Industry approved payments to frontline workers for people whose applications showed signs of fraud without investigating whether the applicants were legitimate,” the report concluded.

The state government watchdog found the department did not verify the adjusted gross income of all applicants, a key indicator of whether a person qualifies for benefits, according to the report.

The warnings and recommendations from the legislative watchdog came as Walz unveiled the largest budget in state history. A record $72 billion “One Minnesota Budget” was funded a whole bunch of progressive programs to fulfill wish listsincluding free meals for school children, free tuition for low-income families, paid family and unwell leave, and making health insurance available to undocumented immigrants.

Walz proposed a huge budget when Minnesota was running a budget surplus, but instead of reducing the burden on state taxpayers, several tax increases have been proposedThese included recent sales and gasoline taxes.

Waltz later propose even greater spending under the additional budget of $226 millionThe measure included a proposed funding boost to facilitate transition a recent state agency, the Department of Children, Youth and Families, that would run food assistance programs and other social services. The budget also included $5 million for food banks. Those recipients operate in the same policy areas that the legislative watchdog warned were vulnerable to fraud and that were exploited during Walz’s term.

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