With estimates of the annual toll on taxpayers for welfare fraud now estimated to exceed $250 billion, an outraged President Trump is demanding that “Congress enact a law mandating prison sentences for individuals who are stealing this money from hard working Americans. I think if you steal from the American people, you should go to prison and for a long period of time. And the more you steal, the longer you’ll stay in that prison.”

“In addition, if a state or local politician knows about fraud and has the ability to stop it, but does nothing about it, they should be held personally liable for the full loss of the American taxpayers’ money that they should have stopped and they should have saved,” Trump added.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif) called Trump’s proposed new law “excessively harsh. Many of the recently discovered perpetrators of this fraud are foreign-born immigrants who are unfamiliar with American laws and customs. Further, as non-citizens they didn’t have any say in electing the people who make the laws some Republicans now insist they must obey. Neither should state officials like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and myself be scapegoated merely for being in office when this tidal wave of fraud hit the country. I doubt the new Democrat majority that will take over in January will look favorably upon Trump’s demands. More likely, Trump will be impeached for discriminating against these immigrants and maligning the public servants who were left holding the bag when the fraud was uncovered.”

John Semmens