Dear Friend, 

Unsurprisingly, the last vote in the House of Representatives before the election was another spending bill. This short-term government funding bill piled spending on top of our $30 trillion budget and did nothing to address our broken budget process. For that reason, I voted “no” on Friday’s spending bill.

Taxpayer dollars should be used wisely and with safeguards to ensure they do not become the subject of fraud and abuse. There is no shortage of examples of what can happen when the federal government throws money at problems without proper accountability. Just last month, the Department of Justice announced charges against 47 individuals in a fraud scheme involving Feeding our Future. This organization, formerly based in St. Anthony, allegedly stole at least $250 million dollars from taxpayers.

This is the largest case of pandemic fraud on record.

Last week, I joined Representative Michelle Fischbach and members of the Minnesota delegation in a letter to the USDA on what they’re doing to prevent future fraud in other federally funded nutrition programs, similar to Feeding our Future.

Instances of misuse are becoming the rule instead of the exception when it comes to large-scale government spending. Oversight is essential to preventing this growing waste and fraud, and we’ve fought to build guardrails into previous government funding.

Last year, we offered an amendment to the American Rescue Plan to redirect $35 million to fund Inspector Generals to detect and prevent fraud like the kind carried out by Feeding our Future; unfortunately, the amendment failed to pass on a partisan vote.

Strong oversight of government spending will be a key part of our work in the next Congress, and we will not support future spending without accountability.

Stay tuned for more on our work in Minnesota and Washington and subscribe to in-depth updates on priorities like the economy, personal freedom and more on our website, here. You can read this week’s blog about financial privacy, here.

Sincerely,