California’s fraud is endemic— Washington has to step in |
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California’s fraud is endemic— Washington has to step in
California was once a beacon of opportunity. Today, our great state maintains its natural blessings and abundance of potential, but both are being smothered by government inefficiency and fraud on a staggering scale.
From unemployment benefits to homelessness programs, billions flow through Sacramento with little real oversight — and that’s by design.
California didn’t stumble into this accountability vacuum; it engineered it. Lawmakers dismantled the Assembly’s dedicated oversight committee and buried its responsibilities within a budget subcommittee that’s proven unwilling — or unable — to demand answers.
The result is predictable: Waste goes unchecked. Even when the independent state auditor flags fraud risks, those warnings are ignored roughly 75% of the time.
This isn’t just mismanagement; it’s a systemic failure.
Fraud is not unique to California, and every state faced challenges during the pandemic. But California’s failures stand apart, not just in scale, but in how long they’ve persisted.
Thousands of inmates, including murderers, rapists, and death row inmates, received up to $1 billion in unemployment benefits. An estimated $146 billion was lost to fraud from Medi-Cal. At least $32 billion was lost in fraudulent payments from the Employment Development Department (EDD) under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s leadership.
It has become so bad that Newsom recently hired a New York PR firm to rehabilitate California’s brand, using $19 million in taxpayer money. He’d rather deflect attention than confront the failures of his policies.
Real oversight requires independent,........