Tax Day has come and gone … along with the money the IRS took from your paycheck. Even if you paid your taxes on time and in full, you are still subject to the threat of an IRS audit.

Meanwhile, fraudsters are treating the national treasury like a personal piggy bank, stealing more than $1 billion from the government every day.

The IRS wants a cut of that loot, requiring that criminals report bribes and stolen goods as taxable income. But does anyone really think the crooks stealing tax dollars are going to share their spoils with the IRS?

Fat chance. In fact, too many of these scammers are getting away without facing any real penalties.

For example, a Minnesota judge overturned the verdict of a jury that convicted a pair of fraudsters for stealing $7.2 million from Medicaid, the health insurance program for the disabled and disadvantaged. Jurors in the case were “shocked” by the judge’s decision because the guilt for the crime was “obvious” and “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Despite concerns that the mastermind behind the largest Medicaid heist in Minnesota history would flee the country, the fraudster was still allowed to keep his passport by a Democrat-appointed judge. As predicted, the criminal who stole $11 million made a getaway rather than facing justice.

Another con artist, who personally pocketed $1 million meant for autism and child nutrition programs, also avoided prison, getting off with just two years of probation.

Minnesota won’t even stop giving tax dollars to scammers suspected of using kickback schemes to rip off welfare programs because “kickbacks” aren’t included in the state’s definition of fraud — an idiotic oversight that easily could be fixed.

To avoid responsibility for failing to protect taxpayers, politicians are targeting those trying to stop, rather than those committing, the fraud.

When then-23-year-old YouTube journalist Nick Shirley exposed the government grift going on in Minnesota and California, Gov. Tim Walz dismissed him as a “delusional conspiracy theorist,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom even called Nick “THE fraud.” Democrats are even pushing legislation in California criminalizing citizen journalists, like Nick, by threatening hefty fines and even imprisonment for exposing fraudsters running sham organizations.

In Minnesota, a longtime civil servant at the Department of Human Services is enduring retaliation by the Walz administration for raising concerns about fraud. She says the department ignored tips from the public about potential fraud and state employees were even directed to fraudulently bill the federal government for a portion of their salaries. “For the record,” she notes, “I have only voted for Democrats. I consider myself a Democrat. This is definitely not something that the Republicans are making up. This is real.”

No political party holds a monopoly on corruption, but only one is standing in the way of stopping it.

In the Senate right now, Democratic obstruction is holding up the passage of my bill extending the statutes of limitations for bringing COVID criminals to justice.

Folks, we all need to remember who this money actually belongs to, the hardworking taxpayers who can only dream of owning some of the luxuries their tax dollars are financing for fraudsters:

• A $109,000 diamond ring a Democratic congresswoman from Florida is flaunting in her official portrait was purchased with disaster relief funds she’s charged with stealing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA);

• A Des Moines man sailed around the Caribbean for several years on a yacht that he purchased with the nearly $2 million he stole from the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program.

• The head of a fake housing agency bought a $7 million mansion in LA by embezzling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars intended to house and feed the needy. He also vacationed at various resorts, from Florida to Hawaii, while ramen noodles and canned beans were handed out to the hungry for whom the taxpayer money he stole was intended.

• A scammer swindled $14 million from pandemic relief programs by filing 1,500 bogus small business loan applications and also collected another $40,000 of unemployment benefits from multiple states. He lived a lavish life in the U.S. with the money but also bought a Mercedes and built a home for his secret second wife in the Palestinian territories.

At the same time fraudsters are living in million-dollar mansions, housing costs for many Americans increased as a direct result of the home-buying spree financed by this fraud. That’s right, folks, the government’s lax oversight of public programs intended to help you is actually driving up inflation while allowing looters to live their best lives, also at your expense.

Health care fraud is putting the physical and financial well-being of Medicare patients at risk. Unsuspecting seniors are getting stuck with bills for services they never received, while others are being denied coverage of medical care because fraudsters have been using their names to file bogus claims.

But that’s not all, folks. Fraud is also financing violent crime. A street gang in Milwaukee financed a murder-for-hire plot and bought guns, drugs, and jewelry with millions of dollars of stolen unemployment assistance. In California, a violent neo-Nazi white supremacist gang financed its criminal operations by ripping off pandemic assistance programs intended to help small businesses and the unemployed.

Fraudsters don’t even have to try very hard to finagle free federal funds:

• Phony businesses with obviously made-up names like F–k The System and Satanic Lives Matter were OK’d for government assistance.

• Some successfully applied for government money using well-known fictional names like Charlie Brown and Nancy Drew.

• California prison inmates, including serial killers on death row, collected as much as $1 billion in unemployment benefits using names like John Adams and Poopy Britches.

• Others uploaded pictures of doll faces to “verify” their identities on applications for government assistance and were still approved!

Enough is enough! We cannot afford any more excuses or delays.

That’s why, along with 12 of my Senate colleagues, I am introducing the Protecting American Taxpayers Act. This comprehensive package includes thoughtful ideas proposed by senators on both sides of the aisle aimed at preventing future fraud and tracking down the billions of stolen dollars and returning the money to taxpayers.

I am also giving my April 2026 Squeal Award to the Lenient Liberal Judges who are literally giving fraudsters a “get out of jail free” card to continue the crime spree that is costing taxpayers more than a billion dollars a day.

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, represents Iowa.