HHS freezes all child care funding in Minnesota in response to fraud allegations.

 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Politico/AP.

HHS has frozen all federal child care funding in Minnesota in response to serious accusations of fraud in the system. Politico. The move comes as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are investigating the Democratic leadership in the state and any connection they have to the fraud. 90 people have been arrested for federal fraud charges since 2021 and an independent state audit said that Governor Tim Walz did not "effectively exercise its authority” in response to the fraud. Walz said he was fighting the fraud and blamed President Trump for the issue. 

My Comment:

Things are escalating very quickly in the Minnesota fraud case and Governor Tim Walz will be lucky if he remains governor for much longer. Pulling funding from all of federal child care funding in Minnesota is a major move and one that will have massive repercussions for the state. In short, I don't think Minnesota is going to be able to actually pay for these daycares now and many of them will shut down. 

Supposedly, Minnesota gets about $200 million a year to fund child care from the federal government and now all of that money has been cut off. I doubt Minnesota has that much money just sitting around. $200 million is not something that can just be found in a mattress (unless you are running a Somali day care apparently). This is going to mean that those fake Somali daycares are going to be cut off from funds. 

But it also means that real Minnesota daycares are going to be cut off too. This isn't a great thing, child care costs in Minnesota are among the highest in the country and it means there is going to be a real effect in terms of costs. There are going to be staffing shortages, daycares being shut down and a lot of angry Minnesota parents.

That might be painful, but this kind of fraud absolutely has to be dealt with and heads absolutely have to roll. People are furious about the graft and stolen tax dollars and the one thing the federal government cannot do is just let this issue fester. Cutting off these funds will stop the outflow of tax dollars to these fraudulent daycares and  that is the most important thing that can happen right now. 

I know that I am angry about this too. The fraud in Minnesota increased the problem of high child care costs. These fake daycares sucked up tax dollars from both the Minnesota and Federal taxpayers. That money should have gone real daycares and if it had the cost of daycare should have gone down. The higher prices had an absolute effect. How many folks in Minnesota didn't have any kids because they couldn't afford it because of child care costs? How many had just one and no more? Given that the fertility crisis is real, this had a major effect on the future of the state. 

As for Tim Walz, I can't imagine he survives this disaster politically. His response has been pathetic, he wants to make this about President Trump, but at some point that isn't going to work. I honestly think the media is starting to turn on him. This was the top story on Google News today and it isn't just conservative outlets covering the story anymore. Even the Politico article was fairly balanced. That's a real bad sign for Walz, when the mainstream media is publishing critical stories about a Democratic Politician, you know the story has legs. 

The real question is if Walz avoids prison. In the past, with this scandal and the Minnesota State Senator assassination case, I said that Walz had a perfect defense in that nobody is going to believe that he's involved in crime due to his obvious stupidity. But given how blatant the fraud was and how ineffective the state was in fighting it, I am beginning to wonder. 

From what I understand, these fraudsters, either in the current daycare scandal or the older "Feeding our Families" covid era scam, many of the players were regularly donating to Democratic politicians in this state. It's still an open question if the Democrats themselves had knowledge that these donations were from stolen taxpayer dollars. Even if they didn't, this is a stain on the elections in the state, tax payer dollars going to only one party in a fraudulent fashion is obviously bad. 

But I am also worried that they did know. Indeed, it's an open secret that the Democrats support this kind of immigration so they can import voters. But it's very likely they do it so they can get funding they syphon off of the government. If that is what happened here and any Democratic politician was aware of it, including but not limited to Tim Walz, then these people need to go to prison.