SAM ADOLPHSEN: ‘One-Door’ Welfare Policy Is A One-Way Street To Welfare Fraud

I saw it with my own eyes from inside the White House.

Alongside prosecutors and investigative journalists, we spent months uncovering the welfare system that Minnesota, President Joe Biden, Gov. Tim Walz, and Rep. Ilhan Omar built: a system designed to cut checks and ask no questions.

Money up front, receipts later. Or never.

That’s why President Donald Trump declared a “War on Fraud” in his State of the Union. Now, some states are considering the unthinkable—purposefully replicating a key factor in the Minnesota fraud nightmare, under the guise of “efficiency.” Governors and legislators need to kill this so-called “One Door” welfare policy. Right now.

“One Door” is an attempt to “streamline” welfare enrollment by using one integrated eligibility and enrollment process for all programs. The only thing “One Door” makes more efficient is enrolling as many people as possible onto welfare and making the safety net more vulnerable to errors and fraud.

It’s not “One Door”—it’s “Open Door,” and it throws open the border to welfare programs, letting anyone in. It is the exact opposite of what the public is demanding right now.

Since 2018, 14 high-risk Medicaid programs in Minnesota alone cost taxpayers more than $18 billion. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota says half or more of that spending was fraudulent.

Thankfully, the “Ghost-billing Busters”— President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Andrew Ferguson —  are doing something about it.Nearly 100 people have been charged with welfare fraud, and the number keeps growing.

Minnesota’s fraud isn’t an accident or an anomaly. It’s the result of a tangled and corrupt web of government officials, left-wing non-profits, and, yes, bad actors.

State officials, with help from Biden bureaucrats, built the system to maximize enrollment and minimize scrutiny. Left-wing NGOs helped create and implement these fraud-by-design schemes. Minnesota worked with Code for America to build a single app that can enroll anyone in up to nine welfare programs in under 15 minutes. They partnered with the left-wing NGO, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to waive work requirements and even drafted Minnesota’s correspondence to federal regulators.

One senior Minnesota DHS official described the process as “cutting and pasting to MN DHS stationery.”

The bank’s security guards unlocked the doors for the robbers.

Now, at a time when the real problem is too much spending on welfare and massive fraud, supporters of this “Open Door” policy have repackaged this model and resold it as “modernization,” burying the pitch under focus-grouped political terms like “integrated eligibility,” “No Wrong Door,” and “One Door.”

More truthfully, it is a one-way street to welfare fraud.

One caseworker, one application, no questions asked. Enroll in one welfare program, and you’re enrolled in all of them, multiplying fraud and erroneous payments across programs. The Left has pushed these policies for more than a decade. Record-high welfare enrollment and crisis levels of fraud show that it works exactly how they intended.

This is the worst possible time for policies we know don’t work.

In the Working Families Tax Cut Act, Trump and congressional Republicans passed the most meaningful welfare reforms in a generation. States must carry them out: strong work requirements, removing illegal aliens from welfare rolls, and protecting program integrity. Those reforms move people from dependency to work. “One Door” does the opposite.

That bill also created financial penalties for states with high food stamp error rates. Without changes, 21 states will face the highest penalties, and nearly all of these operate integrated eligibility systems like Minnesota. Four of the five worst-performing states integrate food stamps and Medicaid. Total exposure under the food stamp penalties alone totals nearly $12 billion in penalties per year.

The reconciliation law also created parallel Medicaid penalties, with potential liability exceeding $100 billion. States that adopt “One Door” lock in error rates that trigger those penalties.

The Trump administration is trying to clean up the fraud mess in Minnesota, while enacting policies to prevent the next one. It would be a critical setback to the Trump administration’s War on Fraud to continue these left-wing “Open Door” policies in the states.

Sam Adolphsen is a founding partner of Red Door Consulting and the former Deputy Assistant to President Trump at the Domestic Policy Council.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: US Government Accountability Office / Wikimedia Commons)

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].