California Turned Elder Care Into a $30 Billion Fraud Machine

Let’s talk about something that should make your blood boil. California’s In-Home Supportive Services Program burns through nearly $30 billion every year, supposedly helping elderly and disabled folks get the care they need at home. Sounds noble, right? Except somewhere between $6 billion and $12 billion of that money vanishes into the pockets of scammers while Gavin Newsom’s political machine keeps humming along, fueled by union dues extracted from this mess.

This isn’t some conspiracy theory cooked up in a basement. Christopher Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp from the Manhattan Institute just pulled back the curtain on one of the largest fraud operations hiding in plain sight. The program pays family members and caregivers to help with cooking, personal care, laundry, those everyday tasks that vulnerable people genuinely need. But here’s the kicker. Weak oversight has turned compassion into cover, and the whole thing operates like a self-licking ice cream cone for California Democrats.

You know what’s particularly galling? The home-care unions are collecting more than $149 million in membership dues from this program. That money doesn’t just sit there. It flows directly into the political network propping up Newsom and his allies. We’re watching a perfect closed loop where fraud funds politics, politics protects the program, and the program generates more fraud. It’s almost elegant in its corruption.

The scale here matters. We’re not talking about some small-time welfare cheating. When you’re losing up to $12 billion annually, that’s real money even by California standards. That’s schools, roads, actual public safety, genuine social services that could change lives. Instead, it’s getting siphoned off by con artists who’ve figured out that California’s bureaucracy is too bloated, too ideological, and too captured by special interests to stop them.

This fits into a broader pattern that conservatives have been screaming about for years. Big government doesn’t just waste money through incompetence, though there’s plenty of that. It creates incentives for corruption that would make a mob boss jealous. The IHSS program sits alongside unemployment insurance fraud, hospice care schemes, and food stamp scams as part of Newsom’s growing portfolio of catastrophic failures. Each one dressed up in the language of compassion and social justice.

Limited government isn’t just some abstract principle we bang on about at think tank conferences. This is exactly why it matters. When you build massive programs with minimal accountability, you’re not helping the vulnerable. You’re creating hunting grounds for predators and slush funds for political machines. The people who actually need home care, the elderly grandmother who can’t do her own laundry anymore, the disabled veteran who needs help with basic tasks? They become props in a larger game.

California keeps doubling down on this model because it works perfectly for the people running the state. Unions get their dues. Politicians get their campaign contributions. Bureaucrats get their empires. And when someone points out the obvious fraud, they get accused of lacking compassion. It’s a brilliant racket if you’ve got no conscience.

The rest of us are supposed to just accept this. We’re told that questioning these programs means we don’t care about the elderly or disabled. That’s garbage. Real compassion means making sure resources actually reach the people who need them, not creating elaborate systems that reward theft and political corruption. It means building programs lean enough to manage and transparent enough to audit.

Newsom’s fraud scandals keep piling up because the incentives never change. Until voters demand accountability, until union money stops buying protection, until someone in Sacramento decides that good governance matters more than political survival, nothing will change. That $30 billion fraud magnet will keep spinning, and the governor will keep pretending everything’s fine.

Related: Hegseth Calls Out Rude Reporter at Pentagon and the Media Melts Down