When Jesus walked into the Temple and found it corrupted – holy space turned into a machine for profit – He did not issue a carefully worded statement. He turned over the tables. He drove out the money changers. And He made it unmistakably clear: God’s house is not a marketplace for thieves.
America is not the Temple. But the public treasury is a sacred trust in its own way – money taken from families, workers, and businesses with the promise that it will be used for the common good. When that money is routinely stolen at breathtaking scale, and the people with constitutional authority to stop the bleeding refuse to act, we are no longer talking about “politics.” We’re talking about moral rot.
The Government Accountability Office estimates total direct annual fraud losses to the federal government at $233 billion to $521 billion (based on fiscal years 2018–2022). Read that again. Even the low end is a national scandal. The high end is a civilizational emergency.
And if anyone thinks this is theoretical, look at Minnesota right now. Federal investigators and prosecutors have been describing large-scale fraud across multiple Minnesota-run programs. Reporting in late December 2025 cites federal officials estimating that up to half of roughly $18 billion in federal funding across 14 programs since 2018 may have been misappropriated – an estimate that has been publicly disputed by state leaders, but the investigation and the scale of the alleged misconduct are real and ongoing. Now the FBI have launched an investigation.
So here is the question every taxpayer should be asking – especially every Catholic who still believes words mean something:
If Congress knows fraud is devouring hundreds of billions of dollars, why does the money keep flowing?
The power of the purse is grounded in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. It can condition funding. It can freeze funding. It can restructure programs. It can require verification, audits, and enforcement before another dollar goes out the door. It can say: No integrity, no check.
And yet, year after year, the public gets a steady stream of televised outrage instead of legislative action.
This is where we must stop pretending we don’t know what we’re seeing.
When lawmakers go on television and declare, “We’ve exposed the corruption,” “We’ve proven the fraud,” “We’re going to stop this,” and then they continue funding the same pipelines that are being looted, that is not oversight. It is performance. And when performance is used to pacify the public while the theft continues, it becomes deception.
Let’s apply plain English.
A lie is an intentionally false statement made to deceive. If lawmakers know the fraud is real (GAO has quantified it), and they know they have constitutional tools to interrupt it, and they tell the public they are “stopping it” while votes and budgets keep the system humming – then what is that?
It is a lie in effect. And those who repeatedly lie to the American people to preserve the system become, by definition, liars.
That isn’t “mean.” That isn’t “partisan.” That is moral clarity.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer has publicly emphasized that many federal programs are vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, pointing to GAO’s High Risk work and the need for accountability. And in Minnesota specifically, Comer’s committee has announced an expanded investigation and sought testimony from state officials. Fine. Investigate. Subpoena. Hold hearings.
But hearings don’t stop theft. Budgets stop theft.
Oversight committees can expose, but appropriators can choke off the cash. And the cash spigot keeps getting turned back on.
The House Appropriations Committee exists precisely for this reason – spending is supposed to be deliberate, conditional, and accountable. Chairman Tom Cole has publicly urged coordination and performance review as part of the appropriations process. Good. Then prove it. Because coordination memos don’t protect taxpayers. Concrete funding conditions do.
Here is what table-turning looks like in 2026:
1) Freeze and condition high-risk funding.
If GAO, inspectors general, or prosecutors flag a program as high-risk, Congress should require real-time verification, tighter eligibility controls, and enforceable audit standards before releasing the next tranche.
2) “No controls, no cash.”
States and agencies that cannot demonstrate functioning anti-fraud controls should lose access to expanded funds until they comply. This isn’t cruelty – it’s basic stewardship.
3) Clawback and debarment as default, not exception.
When fraud is proven, the system should automatically trigger clawbacks, debarments, and referrals. Not “strongly worded concern,” but consequences that change behavior.
4) Public transparency that citizens can actually read.
Every high-risk program should have a public dashboard: total outlays, flagged claims, audit status, enforcement actions. Darkness is where theft thrives.
This is not complicated. Congress can do it. Congress simply refuses to do it.
And that refusal has a name: complicity.
The Gospel is not gentle with thieves, and it is not gentle with leaders who tolerate theft. Scripture repeatedly condemns those who “devour widows’ houses” while maintaining public appearances of righteousness. When public officials protect a system that bleeds families through taxation and then allows criminals to loot the proceeds, it is not merely “waste.” It is injustice.
So yes – turn over the tables.
Not with riots. Not with rage. With moral courage and legislative steel: stop funding fraud. Stop pretending hearings are enough. Stop telling the public you’re fixing it while you keep paying for it.
If Congress will not act, then the public must demand it – and refuse to be pacified by speeches ever again.
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