Where Is $1.4 Billion a Day Going? [Special Guest Jeff Clark]

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:18]Good evening and welcome to Nashville.

[00:00:20]I'm Alan Jackson. The stock market is doing well and the job market remains strong. But there's a less well-known economic indicator that has economists very concerned. The total US national debt is now significantly larger than our GDP, the gross domestic product.

[00:00:38]It's like having an income of $85,000 a year and holding debts that far exceed that. That can work for a few years, but not forever. There's a big contributor to the debt which is only recently getting noticed. It's the fraud, or in planer English, it's called stealing.

[00:00:56]Every day, as much as $1.4 billion dollar of government money is stolen.

[00:01:02]That's the money we pay with our taxes.

[00:01:04]It's a big part of the reason why the total federal debt is approaching $40 trillion. And while officials often blame gangs, organized crime, immigrants, and ordinary Americans, much of that stealing is from inside the government. For example, the park service employee who gave guided tours and was caught on camera stealing $1,200.

[00:01:25]But when authorities looked deeper at her history, they found that she'd been doing that for years and that she had stolen $250,000.

[00:01:32]That's a quarter of a million dollars that went into her own bank account. The stealing is rampant. The losses are staggering. And the fraud has become an acceptable norm by too many people.

[00:01:43]Government employees are the people we trust with our money. But they also have inside access at the federal, state, and local level. And for many, it's just far too easy to steal. Well, we're living in a time when observable truth is often denied in the public square. It's like the sun's coming up in the east, and there's some talking head with lots of letters at the end of their name going, "Well, actually, it comes up in the south. It's disorienting." Well, I'm grateful for the steps that are taken by our current administration to cut waste and fraud, to expose the looting of America. As I've said, it's stealing.

[00:02:18]Now, when I think about the people that have been elected to office, there's a group of public servants that I despise.

[00:02:25]And despise is the kindest word I have.

[00:02:27]And it's not about their political party. It doesn't matter to me whether they're Republican or Democrat. These elected officials were given the authority to serve the people by the people. It's a sacred trust. Yet, these elected officials use their office primarily for personal gain. if they use their elected position to accumulate resources for personal gain. I don't have any respect for that. The way I understand public service is that we go to Washington or wherever we're elected to serve to represent our constituents to bring a better outcome to whomever it is we're representing. And I suppose the old-fashioned term for that was statesmen.

[00:03:03]The expectation that the elected official will go with the good of their constituents as the primary factor for their decisionmaking.

[00:03:11]Well, far too many elected officials have had their snouts in the trough gaining wealth on the back of hardworking taxpaying people. If, for instance, we have a member of Congress whose net worth increases $30 million per year, that should not be all right with us, especially if their state is at the center of multiple high-profile cases of fraud. Well, I'm referring to Representative Elon Omar of Minnesota, who, by the way, now says she's not a millionaire. She blamed her accountant for making the accounting error. A newly revised disclosure shows she and her husband went from $30 million in holdings to less than $100,000.

[00:03:48]Folks, that's not an accounting error.

[00:03:50]That's deceptive accounting.

[00:03:52]We have found out there was brazen fraud taking place in Minnesota. Even money that was meant to feed hungry kids and children with autism in Minnesota.

[00:04:01]Hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly stolen. Well, how about the Medicaid dollars? The Trump administration has suggested that the broader suspected exposure in Minnesota could reach into the billions.

[00:04:13]I would expect the governors and the mayors of the state where billions of dollars are being stolen from taxpayers to be outraged at that. But that's not the response we've seen. We should no longer tolerate government excess, abuse, or sloppiness. I don't want to hear any more of the words. I want to see measurable outcomes. I'll tell you what I'm really watching for. It's a biblical word. It's repentance. You see, if there's no repentance, there's no real change. Repentance carries with it two meanings. It's a change of mind, which means I've been thinking about this the wrong way. And it's a change of behavior, which means I've been acting the wrong way. So, when I hear from elected officials real repentance, when I hear them say, "I brought about this wrong and I have behaved wrong," then I'll trust them to oversee what's next.

[00:05:02]Without repentance, they're simply stalling. They're trying to run out the clock until they can be in power again.

[00:05:09]If politicians who lacked integrity wasn't bad enough, how about the legacy media members who don't say a thing about the corruption, the fraud, the stealing that's taking place? What would it take for somebody like the Atlantic, the Washington Post, or the New York Times to say that this is a problem? To say that the billions of dollars being fraudulently taken from the American people is bad.

[00:05:30]We as the church can't sit quiet in this season. We have an assignment to stand for the truth, to search for it. Because the solution to society's ills, it isn't political. It's spiritual. We must have a faith that is living and vital. A faith that requires situational awareness of the world we're living in.

[00:05:47]We got to tell the truth in terms of today. We must determine to be champions of the truth.

[00:05:54]With the federal deficit approaching $40 trillion, alarms are sounding in economic circles. The stealing is close to a trillion dollars a year and growing. In a moment, we'll be joined by Jeff Clark. He's the vice president of litigation at the Oversight Project.

[00:06:09]I'll be right back.

[00:06:22]The federal debt is so large that it's hard to fathom what $39 trillion represents. But consider this. It was 1982 when the federal debt first passed the $1 trillion mark. Which means that between 1982 and 2026, we've taken on $ 38 trillion more. We pay more in interest on the debt than we do for our defense budget. It's one thing to get spending under control, but it's quite another to get stop the stealing. In Washington DC, the oversight project targets corruption, stealing, and fraud within the government. and we're joined now by their vice president of litigation, Jeff Clark. Welcome to our program, sir.

[00:07:02]>> It's good to be here, Pastor Ellen.

[00:07:04]Thank you.

[00:07:05]>> The headlines have been focused on California and Minneapolis, but very little has been said, at least publicly, about the stealing from within the government. Maybe we start by you telling us what you know about how vast that fraud inside government is.

[00:07:20]>> It is vast. And you know, I I wish I could tell you the details of cases that uh were referred by OM to uh the Justice Department or to inspectors general about uh that. Um if you're not aware, I left uh OM about two months ago. So, I was serving in the in the White House and was privy to a lot of these reports and interfaced uh frequently with uh Doge when that was really in its heyday for the first 6 months or so of the Trump administration in 2025.

[00:07:55]And the other thing probably a lot of your viewers may not understand about OM. They just think it's about uh the budget is that the uh the Council on Inspectors General actually has a reporting relationship into OM. So OM uh gets to work with uh and in many ways direct the activities of the inspector's general which are tasked with uh Pastor Allen rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. So you know there was a major initiative we let me let me tick them off right so we had doge looking at waste fraud and abuse uh and then uh working with us we had our own independent efforts to do that we had the inspector's general looking at that um now uh a new division at DOJ has been created to combat fraud and in Trump 45 I spent more than two years at uh at DOJ so it's it's interesting to uh to to observe the creation of a new litigating division. That doesn't happen every day.

[00:08:56]The last time it happened was the first time I was at DOJ. Uh there was a new litigating division created the national security division after 9/11. Um and then the last thing to note is that obviously the president gave Vice President Vance a special tasking to look at waste, fraud, and and abuse. So, you know, we have a lot of uh more eyes on this problem than we had before. And we also have, you know, great independent journalists, uh, you know, uh, like Nick Shirley who fared it out things like the Quality Liring Center in Minnesota. So, it's a it's an exciting time and, you know, it's just, it's so sad to see how much the federal taxpayer gets ripped off by unscrupulous individuals.

[00:09:41]Now, there are endless examples. The one that I mentioned in the open described a national park employee who over the years stole $250,000 from people who were paying to go on tours. They caught her on videotape. How are most of these federal workers caught? And what percentage are prosecuted?

[00:10:00]>> Not as much as you might think. And you know there there's a referral process there to DOJ for that DOJ then to to exercise its prosecutorial discretion on that. Um you're reminding me uh the national uh park service that uh you know the this is not a new phenomena either. So if I go back to my service in the Bush 43 administration when I was at the environment division there was a famous case that involved uh something where you know there wasn't someone directly lining their pockets but it was someone doing uh something that was incredibly harmful to the national economy. namely they were planting lynx hairs uh so that the endangered species act would get triggered as to particular regions right and the the upshot of that uh Allan is that uh you know the the incredibly ownorous regulatory regime of the endangered species act would kick in. This can block, you know, the avail ability to to uh develop things on your land, block the ability to get f federal permits so that you can make changes to your lands like uh build a new road or or put up a building. And so, you know, this caused a lot more damage than than $250,000, right? So the the amount of uh fraud in terms of dollars whether you consider it in terms of its impacts like this example I just gave about the the links the Canadian links or you know it's it is something where somebody's you know dipping their hand into the till or redirecting money to themselves that they're not entitled to get uh is just you know vast and you know I can also say that when I was in Trump 45 in the civil running the civil division um you know the false claim all false claims act cases run through the civil division and there if private people file those cases the civil division gets to decide whether to let them keep going forward or not and you know I saw a lot of healthc care abuse uh going back then and you know we we did our best even in Trump 45 to try to throw uh the book at that that kind of conduct you know until President Trump launched the Doge committee and then later appointed JD Vance to oversee the investigations of fraud. It's just all too easy to steal and not get caught.

[00:12:19]Vance says that they're going after the thieves full steam ahead. Listen to his comments.

[00:12:25]>> We've got 280 law enforcement officers working on this problem. We really have the most accelerated aggressive anti-fraud operation that we've ever seen from the federal government. And again, it's because the president of United States empowered his team to go after this.

[00:12:40]Will they be going after the inside government fraud as well as the outsiders?

[00:12:46]>> I think so. And I think uh that the inside fraud is especially disturbing, right? Because people take an oath of office when they join even, you know, uh people who are not at the tippy top of the executive branch. And so, you know, it's a it's a breach of the public trust. If you're talking about a private individual who is, you know, skimming money out of uh Medicare, that's bad.

[00:13:10]That's terrible. But, you know, I I consider it to be multiplied when you're talking about public workers who are abusing the public trust of their office. And um you know, that that's the kind of thing where especially if criminal cases are brought against them becomes the basis for sentencing enhancements. And it it should work like that.

[00:13:30]>> Well, Jeeoff, we need to take a short break here. Will you stand by for another segment?

[00:13:34]>> I will. Thank you.

[00:13:35]>> And if you got your phone in your hand, you can try logging on to ajow.com. You can send me an email. You can see how easy it is in the animation. I'll be right back.

[00:13:56]We're back now with the vice president of the litigation at the Oversight Project, Jeff Clark. Do you have any sense of why it seems to have become so easy for so many people to think it's okay for people to steal from the government? Are the penalties too small, too few, and far between? What is it?

[00:14:13]>> I think that the the the penalty regime is healthy. Not that it couldn't be increased even more. Uh but I think the biggest problem is the fact that the government is just too darn big. uh Allan um you know the more fingers uh the more pies it puts its fingers into and the deeper it it uh smooshes its fingers into those pies the more opportunities there are for fraud and uh you know you just you wind up in a spot where there aren't enough people to be watching everybody on a daily basis and uh you know the the the moral standards of the country are such that a lot of people if they're not being watched if there's not you know a direct control.

[00:14:56]If there's not an automatic audit that's going to find them out and they know about that, yeah, they're tempted to to get something for themselves and you know that that's bad enough. But, you know, obviously the industrial scale uh things we're seeing in California that have been exposed and in Minnesota, I mean, those are the things that really need to be prioritized. And that's that's where this new division in DOJ comes in because they will look across the field and they'll prioritize getting the biggest bang for the buck in terms of where they put their enforcement resources so that they cut off as much fraud as possible.

[00:15:34]>> When cases like the Learing Center and the many fraudulent hospice centers in California become so public, does that drive more inside calls on theft going in going on in government or calls to your organization to track them down?

[00:15:47]Yes. Uh so you know we will uh receive tips from whistleblowers and and uh you know they'll contact us. Um they can also report things to the inspectors general of the relevant departments like the inspector general of HHS based on on the example you just gave about California would be uh a good place for for people to start. Uh but you know, we if we're contacted, we're we'll be happy to to talk to anyone who comes in through our website. Uh and uh you know, try to to uh think about whether we might want to represent them or if you know, our resources don't permit that, you know, where to send them so that uh their tips are processed by the appropriate folks.

[00:16:34]As more cases of fraud are becoming public, do you expect that the fraud will slow down or will people just get better at hiding it?

[00:16:43]>> Well, I think what I I've observed over time is that if there's a particular area that is very profitable, but then there's an enforcement initiative against it, it's not like you can ever entirely root out this problem, right?

[00:16:57]It's about our fallen human nature. But then you know the the criminal elements shift into some new scam that they create. I should mention something else which maybe not a lot of people know. Uh but I did mention the false claims act.

[00:17:09]So the false claims act in it and the way it works goes back all the way you know centuries to England uh to a Latin term called key. Uh and so if you're someone who is inside an organization whether it's a governmental organization or a uh a private organization um where the private organization has a contract with the federal government right it has to have some nexus to the federal government fisk being raided then you can come forward you become what's called a relator and if the federal government recovers money or you fighting for them on their behalf recovers money you get to keep a portion of that um and the rest of it goes into the fisk. So there's a system that was created long ago by the uh the English king that would allow you know incentives to be created to sort of a avoid uh you know fraud ripping off the government and and look if they needed to do that back at a time when their governments were tiny think how much you know more important that tool is now when the federal government is just vast beyond measure.

[00:18:16]Well, Iowa's Republican Senator Joanie Ernst, she put it this way. Any bureaucrat busted for treating government benefits like a self-service buffet should be served their next taxpayer funded meal behind bars. You're the vice president of litigation. Is she on the right track?

[00:18:34]She's on the right track. And since you mentioned, you know, her as an Iowa senator, um, you know, one of the the main proponents of the False Claims Act, uh, being interpreted to to weed out, uh, waste, fraud, and abuse, uh, you know, to help relators get what's, uh, they deserve in terms of like pointing that out, uh, bringing it to the federal government's attention so that the recoveries can happen is Senator Chuck Grassley. He's been on that, uh, cause for for decades. Um and you know he w follows it very carefully. So if there's any attempt to kind of make you know some kind of uh reduction in scope of that statute uh he he shows up to oppose it because he thinks it's a a vital tool and and like I said you know it's it's a been a cause of his for a very long time.

[00:19:23]>> Well Jeeoff thanks for your time today.

[00:19:24]If someone listening knows of some egregious abuse or fraud where would they go to report it?

[00:19:30]Well, like I said, you know, uh you if you know that what part of the government it hits, you can then Google uh or you know, use AI or whatever your search method is to look up uh the inspector general for that department, for that agency, that's one thing you can do. Or, you know, if if uh uh you know, you you thought that I might be able to be helpful and my colleagues uh we have a number of lawyers at the oversight project. uh we could talk to you and uh like I said, you know, we might point you uh in the right place to to the government if um you can't quite figure that out. And sometimes again, given how vast the government is and the structures are so complicated, you may be like, I don't know what agency this is in, but we we could help you track that down.

[00:20:16]>> Awesome. What's your website's name?

[00:20:19]>> It is it's yourgov.org.

[00:20:22]So just the word it's your uh yurgov gov.org and uh there are no spaces between the the words.

[00:20:33]>> Well, we look forward to reporting on the progress you make in the months ahead. Hope you'll come back and tell us more when you can.

[00:20:39]>> Thank you, pastor. We'll be back in just a moment.

[00:20:46]Thank you for taking the time to send your emails, your questions, and thoughts. We always look forward to them. Kimberly from Texas wrote, "Why do the comedians in talk shows think they should talk about our president the way they do? It's sad." Well, I agree. It's sad. Sometimes it's infuriating. It seems to me that comedians, even education, have become more propaganda centers where they attack worldviews that they don't agree with. They don't have to use logic or common sense.

[00:21:14]They're just filled with anger and bitterness. It's easy to change the channel, and if you do so, you can change your attitude.

[00:21:21]Lee from Georgia wrote, "Parents are now being held liable for allowing access to guns for their children when they go to school and murder classmates and others.

[00:21:30]Shouldn't rogue prosecutors and judges be held liable for releasing violent criminals back onto our streets?" Well, I'm not an attorney. I don't know the ins and outs. I'm a citizen and I know that we elect our prosecutors and many of our judges. I think if we'll pay more attention at the ballot box and be more involved in the process. This is an election year and election season for primaries. I hope you're planning to participate. If you're not participating, you are forfeiting the rights of citizenship.

[00:22:01]Finally, Fred from Katy, Texas. What happens to good people when they die?

[00:22:08]Well, the question is not complete because good is not the characteristic that determines our eternity. It's our relationship to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And so good alone is not sufficient. I'm confident there will be good people in hell, kind people, generous people, polite people. It's our relationship with Jesus that determines our destiny. It's why we want to share the good news of what Jesus has done in our lives. It'll help out our friends and family members. Thanks for the questions and for spending a few minutes of your day with us. God bless you and have a good evening.