Sen. Kennedy calls for welfare reform to address Minnesota fraud: 'Do another reconciliation bill'

By U.S. Sen. John Kennedy
R-Louisiana

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has called on Senate leadership to do another reconciliation bill to address the widespread welfare fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere throughout the United States in this recent speech on the U.S. Senate floor.

In our country, I’ve said this before, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. Other countries let their fellow citizens die in a ditch. We don’t do that in America. The American people have stepped up to the plate.

So, when people steal this money, this $1 trillion-plus a year that we spend helping our neighbors, when people steal that money, it offends me. When they steal from the poor, and they steal from the American taxpayer, it offends me equally. And the folks in Minnesota and elsewhere who stole this money, who took a giant whiz – a giant great Dane whiz – down the leg of every taxpayer and every poor person in America, every one of them ought to go to jail.

We’re spending a trillion dollars a year of American taxpayer money to help poor people, to provide welfare, and the GAO estimates that about at least $250 billion has been stolen every year. We took some baby steps in the One Big Beautiful Bill. We tightened up eligibility requirements. We’ve implemented a work requirement, but we need to do more. We need to do more. And that’s why we need to do another reconciliation bill.

Now, I hope I’m wrong when I say this. I hope I’m wrong. I invite my Democratic colleagues in the Senate – I love them all – to come forward and help us. But I just know politics, and you do, too. A lot of them are going to be reluctant, but we don’t need their assistance. We can pass a welfare security bill without Democratic votes.

If I could do it on my own, I would introduce the bill tomorrow. I would look at every state, every country and adopt the best practices, and my bill can be ready in two weeks, but I can’t do a thing about getting it passed because I don’t have the authority to bring it to the floor of the Senate. I don’t. Only the majority leader can agree to bring a bill to be considered by the Senate.

Those are the rules. If I were king for a day, I’d change it in a nanosecond. I think every senator ought to be able to bring his bills to the floor. And that’s not a criticism of my good friend, John Thune, or my good friend Mitch McConnell, or my good friend Chuck Schumer. They’re just following the rules. I’d change them.

I’m not going to bubble wrap it. We’ve got $30-plus trillion worth of debt. We’ve got people stealing from poor people and laughing about it. And politicians participating in it. 

The water is not going to clear up for America until we get the pigs out of the creek. Let’s go get the pigs out of the creek. Please, Senator Thune. Please let us do another reconciliation bill. Please lead with welfare reform. We can do it.

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