All too frequently government programs for sympathetic causes are plagued by high levels of fraud.

Consider Minnesota. Thieves systematically ripped off programs to feed children, provide housing and child care, and help children with autism. Federal prosecutors believe the amount stolen could top $9 billion. Prosecutors have already secured more than five dozen convictions.

The conflict over immigration enforcement drove this story from headlines, but it remains a massive scandal.

After this story received public scrutiny, the Trump administration moved to freeze more than $10 billion for social service programs in several blue states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The targeted programs included the Child Care Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and the Social Services Block Grant program. The effort is currently tied up in federal court.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, they aren’t only being ripped off in Democrat-run states. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, many states have used TANF money for a variety of questionable expenditures.

“Audits have shown a range of problems, including states inaccurately reporting large expenditures and disbursing millions of dollars to contractors without tracking how the cash was spent,” the Journal wrote. “State and federal records show red and blue states alike have directed hundreds of millions of dollars to programs with tenuous — or no —connections to TANF’s goals.”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In 1996, President Bill Clinton and Republicans, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, worked to revamp welfare. Instead of paying people directly, the federal government sent money to the states as block grants. The theory was that states would be better positioned to spend the money.

Clinton called it “ending welfare as we know it.”

In some ways that has been true. The number of families receiving a direct financial stipend from TANF fell from more than 2.5 million in 1999 to under 1 million in recent years. But there have been many examples of states using their financial flexibility to plug budget holes or fund pet projects, not help needy families. The federal government has been lax in requiring states to live up to standards the law already put in place.

Hayden Dublois with the Foundation for Government Accountability “estimates 1 in 5 TANF dollars, or about $6 billion, is misspent every year,” the Journal reported.

Good intentions aren’t enough. The federal government needs to implement and enforce more safeguards to ensure that the money spent on this program and others is used as intended rather than lining the pockets of fraudsters and scammers. The American taxpayer deserves no less.

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