The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President JD Vance, is highlighting egregious examples each week of billions lost to fraud in programs meant to help people get back on their feet.
Welfare fraud deserves consequences. But right now, Washington responds to fraud after taxpayer dollars are stolen. Real reform needs to move upstream to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse from occurring in the first place.
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Welfare fraud is as much a design problem as an enforcement one, and enforcement alone can’t fix it. Until Congress lets states simplify and modernize their systems, taxpayers will keep funding a system that is both easier to exploit and harder for families to use.
States must be held accountable when fraudsters exploit a poorly run system. But there’s a limit to what they can fix on their own.
Today’s safety net spans more than 90 different programs, each with its own rules, applications, and data systems that rarely talk to each other, not even to verify that an applicant’s information is consistent across programs. That leaves gaps, and fraudsters find them.
When systems don’t connect, people slip through eligibility checks, double-dip across programs, or keep collecting benefits they no longer qualify for. The complexity creates blind spots that hurt more than taxpayers — they hurt families in crisis, too.
Parents facing homelessness, domestic violence, or unexpected job loss encounter duplicative paperwork, conflicting requirements, and long delays when they just need help getting back on their feet. A system that’s hard to navigate for honest families is even easier to game for bad actors.
A convoluted, duplicative safety net also tends to fail at its most important goal: helping people move toward stable work. For many Americans, a steady job is the surest path out of poverty. But welfare and workforce programs are largely disconnected, as if they serve entirely different people.
There’s a better way, and one state has already proven it.
For decades, Utah has run a system that unites workforce programs and social services under one roof: one caseworker, one plan, addressing immediate needs while pointing people toward long-term work. Because Utah’s programs share data and coordinate services, the state verifies eligibility in real time, catches duplicate enrollment, and flags suspicious activity before money goes out the door.
The results are hard to ignore. Utah has one of the lowest error rates in its food assistance program. It also has the lowest share of residents on Medicaid and one of the lowest shares on SNAP — just 4.8%. Its employment-to-population ratio runs about seven points above the national average.
That’s what happens when a system is designed to prevent fraud, not just catch it afterward. Fewer gaps to exploit, fewer overlapping programs to manipulate, clearer accountability when something goes wrong, and a better experience for families, who get a bridge to work instead of a bureaucratic maze.
SNAP WASN’T CUT. IT WAS CAUGHT
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas are starting to move in this direction, but federal law still blocks most states from designing their systems the way Utah did decades ago, before those restrictions existed. The U.S. House Education & Workforce Committee recently took a step toward more flexibility by advancing “Make America Skilled Again” state demonstration projects in the A Stronger Workforce for America Act. Congress needs to do more.
The task force’s weekly revelations are a reminder of how much fraud is out there, but exposing it after the fact isn’t the same as preventing it. If lawmakers only chase fraud after it happens, the same broken system stays in place. Protecting taxpayers and helping families succeed means stopping fraud before it starts. Congress should let states modernize welfare, focus on work, and move accountability into one coordinated system.
Les Ford is a senior fellow at the Alliance for Opportunity. Rachel Barkley is the executive director at the Alliance for Opportunity.
