WOF 547: Fraud: a Scourge on the Common ...

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. One of the biggest political stories of this year can be summed up in one word: fraud. Minnesota, where we are recording this show, has been an epicenter of the systematic theft of public dollars. But this is not only a problem for us. It's a national epidemic. From California to New York, Arizona to Florida, and even Texas, the US Government Accountability Office estimates that American taxpayers lose between—get this—$233 billion up to $521 billion to fraud per year. On the high end, that is almost double the annual budget of New York state and more than the entire yearly GDP of the country of Denmark. The sheer scope of this swindle is bad enough. The fact that so much of it is taken from those who need the funds most—through the defrauding of Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs meant to support vulnerable people—makes the issue a national crisis. How should we respond to this scourge of dishonesty from the standpoint of Catholic social thought? Why is fraud such a grave injustice, especially in its effects on the common good? And what does the Bible say about taking what does not rightly belong to you? Here to offer a distinctively Catholic account of why the plundering of the public coffers is one of the great social injustices of our time is Bishop Robert Barron.

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