Trump and Vance Roll Out an Anti-Fraud Tip Line With a 1 Percent Commission as the Midterms Near

The White House says it has a new approach to combating waste, fraud and abuse in government: a tip line where Americans can be rewarded for reporting spending misconduct. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance jointly announced the line, NPR reported. "If you turn somebody in, and you, let's say, report, and you find a billion dollars, we are giving a commission to that person of 1%," Trump said.

The tip line sits on top of work Vance has been doing for months. In Ohio last week, the vice president announced his anti-fraud task force had found millions of dollars of fraudulent benefits claims, this time in the federal food assistance program SNAP. "We find that there are people out there who decide to commit fraud against these programs who, quite literally in this case, will steal from the mouths of hungry children in order to enrich themselves," Vance said. Trump put the wider claim in his own words: "Because the kind of money that's been stolen is trillions from this country by crooked politicians." Combating fraud in programs like Medicaid and SNAP has become a signature project of the vice president, and corruption has increasingly become a focus of the president as well in the lead-up to the midterm elections.

The politics underneath are unusually broad. A recent Fox News survey found nearly 90 percent of Americans are concerned about perceived corruption in government, figures mirrored nearly exactly by a September Gallup poll, and University of Massachusetts Amherst political scientist Ray La Raja found the same nearly universal concern in his own September survey. "I believe this is pretty much off the charts," La Raja said, adding that the issue is especially powerful alongside voters' economic concerns.

The two parties aim the same concern at different targets. Vance, asked in a televised town hall this month about abuse by the president himself, said he had not seen "a single shred of evidence" that Trump participates in or sanctions corruption. NPR reported the New York Times' estimate that Trump has more than tripled his wealth since starting his second term - conservatively an increase of about $4 billion - and that Democrats are making the case that corruption starts with the president. Christopher Miller, who teaches public policy at the University of Richmond, argued the task force's focus on benefits fraud amounts to "punching down at, you know, less-advantaged populations," while East Carolina University's Jody Baumgartner said Vance's anti-fraud portfolio also positions the vice president for 2028: "When 2028 rolls around, and he starts his campaign - 'cause you know he's running, right? - he's going to be able to point to this stuff." Election Day is November 3.