The Hill first published this opinion piece.

Recent welfare scams in Mississippi and federally subsidized day care and child nutrition frauds in Minnesota have cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars. Although their audacity and scope may shock the nation’s collective conscience, these scandals are yet another example of an age-old economic maxim: No one spends other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own.  

Bad actors aside, fraudulent welfare spending arises and persists in large part because the U.S. welfare system allows state governments to spend federal money rather than their own, with little political risk or actual administrative oversight required. In fact, Washington encouraged states to spend federal money as quickly as possible during and after the pandemic, just in case the welfare spigot should soon run dry.

Click here to read the full opinion in The Hill.