On April 10, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about some of the fraud the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is finding in government benefits.

The article reports:

On Wednesday, The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced its findings from an initial survey of unemployment insurance claims since 2020 and uncovered three stunning discoveries regarding unemployment fraud.

…24,500 people over 115 years old claimed $59 million in benefits.

28,000 people under the age of five claimed $254 million in benefits.

9,700 people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69 million in benefits. In one case, a person with a birthday in 2154 who claimed $41,000 in benefits.

The article concludes:

President Trump also told reporters aboard Air Force One last week that DOGE found something “horrible” but refused to elaborate.

“We have found hundreds – think of it – just hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse and waste. They’re still going strong. They found something today that is horrible, it’s horrible,” Trump said.

Was Wednesday’s unemployment fraud the discovery Trump was referencing?

The problem with government benefits is the lack of connectivity between the Washington bureaucracy and the people actually getting the benefits. Ideally, there would be local supervision to determine if a claim was real. I can remember back in the age of dinosaurs when the company I worked for closed, I had to report to the unemployment office weekly to get my check and to search the computers for job opportunities. If a person were required to show up at the local unemployment office, it would be very obvious if they were over 115 years old, under 5 years old, or not born yet.

It seems to me that cleaning out the fraud in some of our government programs might be a serious step on the road to a balanced budget.