Friend,
It passed.
This afternoon, the U.S. House passed the National Fraud Enforcement Division Act, a bill I was proud to author.
Through this legislation, the Department of Justice will have a permanent division whose entire job is finding, investigating, and prosecuting the people stealing your tax dollars, not a temporary task force that gets quietly disbanded or another report that sits on a shelf.
A standing division, led by a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General, with authority to run investigations across state lines and across agencies, and a mandate to dismantle the organized fraud rings that have been draining federal programs for years. Its prosecutors are barred from political activity, so no administration of either party can turn it into a weapon.
Minnesotans don't need this explained to them.
We watched roughly a quarter of a billion dollars walk out the door in the Feeding Our Future scheme — the largest pandemic fraud case in the country, run right here in our state, with money that was supposed to feed hungry kids. The fraudsters then developed scheme after scheme to defraud program after program, everything from autism services to housing assistance. The people elected and appointed to provide oversight looked the other way as another quarter of a billion dollars vanished.
I didn't go to Washington to shrug at that. Every dollar stolen is a dollar a farmer near Fairmont or a small business owner in Winona earned and sent in.
And this is exactly why Democrats put Minnesota's First District on the DCCC's “Red to Blue” list: not because we're failing southern Minnesota, but because we're delivering. Effective Republicans are the ones they most want gone, and they have millions in national money lined up to do it.
I can't outspend them. But we can close the gap and get the truth out!
If today's fraud bill passage is the kind of work you want representing southern Minnesota, chip in now:
