Republicans Push “Waste and Fraud” Narrative Again to Gut the Social Safety Net

Congress hasn’t finished the second reconciliation bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, but Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), who chairs the House Budget Committee, has already started laying out his caucus’s wish list for a third. In particular, he specified that Republicans want to pour billions of dollars into military spending. To offset those costs, Arrington is eyeing more cuts to safety net programs, disguised as “anti-fraud” measures.

In one sense, that’s not a surprise. It’s campaign season, and Republicans are eager to wave the flag of waste, fraud, and abuse. It’s a way to distract the public from rising gas prices, tariffs, and an unpopular war that is definitely not over. For the GOP, going after programs that help everyday people meet basic needs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) and Medicaid, is good politics — though it is bad policy. These programs support the health and well-being of children and families, as well as boost the economy. In contrast, cutting nutrition assistance and health care, as the first reconciliation bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act — did, will increase poverty, hunger, and poor health. This, in turn, will impose significant long-term costs on all of us.

These “fraud” narratives are grounded in longstanding racial and gender stereotypes. From Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” to Bill Clinton’s unwed teen mothers to the myth of pet-eating Haitian immigrants born of JD Vance’s fever dreams, politicians have deployed these tropes to depict the Black and Brown women who rely on public programs as undeserving and taking advantage of the “rest of us.” Again, this helps obscure the fact that politicians’ policy choices force millions of people to rely on programs like SNAP and Medicaid for food and health care. For example, federal lawmakers have declined to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 for nearly 27 years, even as the cost of groceries, housing, and child care outpaces wage increases.

Indeed, Representative Arrington, his Republican colleagues in Congress, and the Trump administration have done little to make life more affordable for families. But they have been hyper-focused on alleged fraud in federal programs. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) tried to freeze federal child care funding to Minnesota after a right-wing influencer with a track record of spreading misinformation made unsubstantiated fraud claims against Somali child care providers. Despite the lack of credible evidence, HHS then tried to freeze child care and social services funding in Minnesota and four other states in January (although a federal judge put the brakes on that attempt). HHS also imposed new “defend the spend” requirements on states receiving funds from the Administration for Children and Families, threatening to delay funding that parents and child care providers rely on. This extensive list doesn’t even include all of HHS’s announced measures, much less the administration’s creation of a new task force; efforts to put other public programs, like Medicaid, under scrutiny; and hearings, letters, and legislation introduced by Republican leaders in Congress.

The truth of the matter, however, is that these efforts are less about ensuring that public dollars are spent for their intended purpose and more about cutting basic needs programs altogether.

To be sure, it’s important that federal dollars are properly spent. That’s why authorizing statutes that provide federal funding for benefits like child care assistance set out specific procedures for ensuring program integrity and operations, including investigations, corrective action, and penalties. State and federal agencies that administer child care and other social services programs also have numerous oversight processes, including program audits. These safeguards aren’t perfect, but they are effective. For example, the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which is the largest source of federal child care funding, reported an error rate of under 4 percent in 2023 — before any of the administration’s new requirements, tip lines, or task forces were dreamed up.

It’s hard to seriously argue that this administration is concerned with rooting out fraud, considering the president has pardoned wealthy donors convicted of tax fraud, forgoing millions of dollars in restitution. So, I repeat: This is not really about responsible stewardship of public resources or making life more affordable for struggling families.

The “tell”? It’s Representative Arrington’s statement about how congressional Republicans intend to use “savings” from “anti-fraud policies”: to offset the cost of more military spending. Even as families across the country struggle to afford the basics, it apparently didn’t occur to him to instead dedicate those savings to ensure that more eligible children, individuals, and families receive support from the targeted programs. Like Arrington, Donald Trump stated flatly that he doesn’t think about American families’ financial situation in light of the Iran war.

In fact, the $100 billion in defense spending that is Arrington’s starting point for a third reconciliation bill could instead restore about half of the SNAP funding that was cut under the first. This crusade is not — and never has been — about the well-being of everyday Americans. Millions of families will be hungrier and sicker because of the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in the OBBB last July. Cutting SNAP, Medicaid, or other programs even more, just one year later, to fund a war the public overwhelmingly opposes — that’s the real fraud.