Vice President JD Vance, leader of the White House’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, has uncovered $230 billion in fraud since January 2025. Now, he is calling on Congress to help combat fraud, protect social programs, and restore social trust.
Vance called Republican members of Congress to the White House to ask for their help and announce policy priorities.
“We will fundamentally always have a limitation unless our colleagues in the House and the Senate are working with us,” Vance said Wednesday at the roundtable event. “There are a few things that we really need to do, and that we can’t do at the federal government without the cooperation of Congress.”
Vance explained that while the task force has been successful at identifying where fraud is taking place, it needs legislation to prevent it from continuing, disincentivize fraudsters with harsher punishments, and add guardrails to protect social programs.
He described a “black box” around state programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. When the federal government sends out tax dollars appropriated and approved by Congress, it is blocked from seeing how those tax dollars are spent.
“We need some legislation that would actually force some data sharing between the state governments and the federal governments,” Vance said. “We need to know where your tax dollars are going.”
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the co-chair of the task force, laid out 10 “practical” and “commonsense” ideas for Congress to act on now. The list included forcing government agencies to verify eligibility before cutting a check, requiring states to conduct criminal background checks, and verifying applicants through a free federal database.
He also suggested cross-checking welfare rolls with death and incarceration records once a month, doubling the number of welfare fraud investigators, requiring photo ID for welfare recipients, prohibiting liquor stores and smoke shops from accepting food stamps, and ending automatic reenrollments.
The Republican Study Committee launched a framework to combat fraud in January 2025. The committee’s chairman, August Pfluger, also called on Congress to act now.
“I thank Vice President Vance and the Fraud Task Force for their diligence in identifying fraud and returning billions of dollars to the American people,” Pfluger said in a statement. “Now Congress must finish the job. The RSC has put forward a framework to codify these anti-fraud measures into law. There is no excuse for delay.”
Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley and White House security adviser Stephen Miller joined Vance and members of Congress at the Wednesday roundtable.
Others present at the event included Rep. Brandon Gill, chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on Exposing Institutional Abuses, along with Reps. Derrick Van Orden, Scott Perry, Rob Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie. Also in attendance were Sens. Mike Lee, Eric Schmitt, Ashley Moody, Bernie Moreno, Pete Ricketts, Joni Ernst, and Dave McCormick.
