Expect the fight against fraud to dominate the Republican agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail in the months ahead: It’s past time to stop the theft of tens and even hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars from programs meant to help the sick, needy and otherwise vulnerable. 

Wednesday saw Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) unveil the Protecting American Taxpayers Act, a major package of legislation produced by the DOGE Caucus, a group of senators aiming to continue the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, the executive branch agency spearheaded by Elon Musk that targeted fraud and waste. 

The bills would nearly a quarter-trillion dollars by fixing weak points in our financial governance through:

• restricting payments from being made until a service is provided.

• cutting off convicted crooks from Small Business Administration assistance.

• handing out rewards to employees who catch fraud.

• extending the statute of limitations on COVID-relief-related crimes.

• clawing back $65 billion in unspent COVID funds.

The list is an eye-opener: Why isn’t Uncle Sam doing all this already?

Painfully public evidence shows that neither the executive nor the legislative branch did nearly enough to ensure tax dollars weren’t siphoned off from those truly in need by con artists and outright thieves. 

Look at the fraud rings, often run by Somalian immigrants, that stole billions in Minnesota by scamming Medicaid, running fake day cares and other grifts in the name of helping the downtrodden, the $250 million COVID-era fraud of Feeding Our Future being the ugly showpiece. 

Or hospice-care fraud in California, a truly despicable con that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services head Dr. Mehmet Oz has estimated at as much as $100 billion.

One single doc, Fariba Javaherian, billed $35 million. 

Don’t get us started on COVID’s Paycheck Protection Program: Fed investigators estimate of as much as $100 billion of the $800 billion lent in total — nominally to keep employers afloat and their employees fed and paying the rent during pandemic biz shutdowns — went to fraudsters.

All this shows that DOGE’s work was beyond necessary, despite the difficulties that plagued the agency, and the DOGE Caucus’ new bills are equally vital to enshrine anti-fraud efforts in law so they don’t depend on presidential administrative powers.

As votes on the bills approach, expect the usual outcry from the left, just as when DOGE took the ax to wasteful programs. 

First will come screams of racism, disingenuously pretending (for example) that Somali crooks in Minneapolis are being targeted for their nationality rather than their crimes. 

Add apocalyptic predictions about what turning off the unsupervised money spigot will do — just the furor over the Trump  dismantling of USAID. 

That agency did important work — but had become a major conduit for loony-left nonprofits who burned federal cash on such absurdities as condoms for the Taliban, Irish musicals promoting DEI, and atheism promotion in Nepal. 

And after the State Department took over AIDS-relief effort PEPFAR from USAID, just as many people got treatment (about 21 million) as in the last Biden year even as major progress was made on treatment, testing, and prevention — all without “nongovernmental organization” bloat.

That proves that ending corruption in domestic programs will give better results to Americans who actually need assistance (as opposed to flimflammers buying Ferraris while on SNAP). 

Exterminating fraud is a moral and practical necessity — and Democrats’ efforts to keep it safely hidden will expose their dependence on parasites and scammers.