A new HUD report flagging potentially fraudulent rent assistance payments shows how quickly waste can spread when financial controls are loosened, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told Newsmax on Wednesday.
"The tentacles of the fraud are very deep," Carson said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," adding that he was "alarmed at how much fraud and misuse of funding there was" when he arrived at HUD.
Carson said the agency reduced fraud during President Donald Trump's first term, when he served as HUD secretary, but said problems returned during former President Joe Biden's administration.
The report discussed on the program said that under the Biden administration, roughly 30,000 deceased individuals and thousands of noncitizens received federal funding, with alleged improper payments totaling billions of dollars.
Carson said that during Trump's first administration, HUD strengthened oversight measures and tightened financial controls, and he said public complaints about fraud at the agency declined afterward.
"Before the Trump administration, there were all these allegations about fraud going on at HUD. Used to hear it all the time," Carson said.
"It took about a year and a half before you stopped hearing that," he added. "That's because we put so much effort into wiping out the fraud and putting in financial controls."
Carson said he recently spoke with HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Turner's staff about findings in the agency's financial reporting, calling them "quite astonishing."
Carson said the misuse can quickly return "when you don't put the financial controls in place," involving payments for people who are dead, or inappropriate project-based and tenant-based funding.
"It didn't take very long for the Biden administration to relax those controls," Carson said. "And this is what happens. It happens in HUD. It happens in lots of other agencies across government."
"They recognize that when the money is inappropriately spent, it means those who actually need it are not getting it," he said.
Carson compared efforts to rein in improper spending to turning a large ship, saying it can take time to reverse course once lax enforcement takes hold.
"It's sort of like a cruise ship. You've got to turn it around," he said. "It takes a while to turn that thing around."
Carson also weighed in on reports of alleged fraud in Minnesota involving daycare and learning centers, saying the breadth of the issue makes it difficult to dismiss.
"They came to at least 50 different centers, and there were no kids in any of them," Carson said. "You have to be really gullible to believe that that's a coincidence."
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