Stephen Miller praised the Anti-Fraud Taskforce led by Vice President J.D. Vance, saying the effort has moved faster than a typical government initiative and has already produced indictments, recovered funds, warrants, raids, seizures, investigations, and new legal actions.
“I thank you, and thank you again to the Vice President for leading this effort, for helming this task force, for bringing us all together here,” Miller said.
Miller said the task force moved from its creation to action faster than other government task forces.
“I think you can all agree that this is the fastest in history that a government task force has traveled from creation to action,” Miller said.
“Your typical lead time is going to be a year of meetings before anything happens, and that’s if you’re lucky.”
Miller said the task force has already produced a broad series of enforcement actions within weeks.
“And within weeks of this task force being established, we’ve seen the largest ever slate of indictments, recovered funds, search warrants, raids, seizures, investigations, and new legal actions to stop, disrupt, and prevent fraud,” Miller said.
According to Miller, the task force has found fraud to be worse than expected.
“What we’ve learned, which is not surprising to those of us who spent some time in this area, is that fraud is every bit as bad as President Trump said it was, and even worse,” Miller said.
“So, in other words, everything we found either confirms our worst fears or exceeds them,” he added.
Miller said the good news is that the task force has assembled what he described as the right team to address the problem.
“That’s the bad news. The good news is that the best team in government, under the leadership of Vice President Vance, has been assembled to deal with it,” Miller said.
He also referenced Colin McDonald, whom he identified as the Associate Attorney General for Fraud Enforcement.
“And of course, one of those, those men who you’ll hear from a second, is sitting to my right here, the Associate Attorney General for Fraud Enforcement, Colin McDonald,” Miller said.
Miller then turned to welfare, entitlements and other government systems, saying they were built on what he called the honor system.
“But before I yield the floor, I do want to just touch on one of the points that Andrew hit on his remarks,” Miller said.
“All of the systems in our country, whether you’re talking about voting, whether you’re talking about entitlements, whether you’re talking about welfare benefits, were set up based on the honor system.”
Miller said those systems assumed people would follow rules and comply with the law.
“They’re set up based on the idea that you could trust the average person through their own morality to abide by the rules and comply with the law,” Miller said.
He argued that many welfare systems rely on statements from applicants without sufficient verification.
“And so the way most welfare works in most states and most places is we take your word for it,” Miller said.
“If you thought a piece of paper and you say your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps.”
Miller said the country does not verify even basic claims in some cases.
“We don’t check as a country if you even have kids,” Miller said.
“In fact, as basic as that, we don’t even check if you even have children. You will just start getting the checks.”
Miller cited the Somali refugee problem in Minnesota as an example of people not following the honor system.
“And so what’s happened to our country is we became a society, as we’ve seen with the Somali refugee problem in Minnesota, where you have a large number of people that are not following the honor system, they’re not playing by the rules, they’re not abiding by our laws,” Miller said.
He said the amount taken from taxpayers is enormous.
“And the amount that has been fleeced from us is in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Miller said.
Miller argued that proper eligibility checks could have a major impact on federal spending.
“I believe, based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, is that we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who are properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them,” Miller said.
He said that is what the country ultimately must do.
“And that ultimately is going to be what we have to do as a country,” Miller said.
Miller closed by crediting Vice President Vance’s leadership for what he called an aggressive effort to stop criminal fraud.
“In the meantime, because of the vice president’s leadership, you are seeing the most muscular, robust, aggressive, dedicated, determined, and speedy effort to shut down criminal fraud that has not only ever occurred in the history of this country, but in any developed nation,” Miller said.
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