The President signs an executive order creating a federal Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

OK. Hold the phone. Monday afternoon. The President of the United States, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with the Vice President at his right shoulder and the FTC Chairman at his left, signed an executive order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.

The Task Force is chaired, hon, by Vice President JD Vance. The Vice Chairman is the FTC Chairman, Andrew Ferguson. The task, on the fact sheet, is to eliminate fraud in federal benefit programs. The executive order identifies Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security disability as the primary targets. The executive order identifies fraud as a threat to the American people.

Hon. Eliminate fraud. In the federal government. I am not going to argue with the premise. The federal government, like every large institution, has some level of fraud, and most of that fraud, by every honest study I have ever read, is small-dollar and administrative and concentrated in the Medicare Advantage and Medicaid managed care contracts where the contractors are companies with very expensive lobbyists.

What is not in the executive order, hon, is the kind of fraud where the President’s resort is the venue for the Department of State summit and State pays the President’s company. That is not in the order. What is not in the executive order is the kind of fraud where the National Security Council schedules a bilateral meeting at the President’s hotel and charges the taxpayer the meeting fee. That is not in the order. What is not in the executive order is the kind of fraud where a Cabinet officer holds her testimony on a day the administration has already drafted the press release announcing her replacement. That is not in the order.

The fraud, hon, on the executive order, is the fraud committed by the single mother in Iowa who checked the wrong box on her SNAP application. The fraud, on the executive order, is the fraud committed by the disabled veteran in Tennessee whose paperwork was misfiled by the VA. The fraud, on the executive order, is not the fraud committed by the holding company that bills the State Department for the coffee at the summit in the resort the President owns.

You ever notice how the task force on fraud is always aimed at the people who cannot afford a lawyer, and never aimed at the people who can? That is not a coincidence, hon. That is the design of the task force.

Same Monday, hon, the Center for Strategic and International Studies publishes its day-twelve cost estimate for the Iran war. The day-twelve number is sixteen point five billion dollars. The task force is not aimed at the sixteen point five billion dollars spent in twelve days in a war the President says is almost over. The task force is aimed at the Medicare Advantage claim form.

The Medicare Advantage claim form, hon, is not the fraud problem in the United States of America. The Medicare Advantage claim form, hon, is the easy fraud problem to talk about in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on a Monday afternoon with the Vice President at the right shoulder and the FTC Chairman at the left.

Funny how that works.