Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants taxpayers to pour more money into Obamacare’s bloated subsidy machine. He just doesn’t want to talk about the billions already lost to fraud, phantom enrollees, and a system that pays insurers for people who don’t even exist.
Schumer made headlines last week with a viral swipe at War Secretary Pete Hegseth, comparing Pentagon spending to the cost of extending enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits. But as Fox News Digital reported, that talking point crumbles under the weight of documented fraud, fake enrollees, and a Government Accountability Office investigation that found the ACA marketplace approved coverage for made-up people, and kept paying for them month after month.
Schumer posted to X, attacking Hegseth by name:
“Hegseth spent $93 billion in one month, roughly the cost of extending the ACA tax credits for THREE YEARS. But instead of lowering American’s healthcare costs, Hegseth used millions of taxpayer dollars on fruit baskets, Herman Miller recliners, ice cream machines, Alaskan King Crabs, and a Steinway & Sons grand piano.”
It’s a catchy line. It’s also deeply misleading.
The Pentagon spent $93.4 billion in the final month of the last fiscal year. That figure nearly mirrored the $79 billion Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spent in September 2024, a pattern driven by the well-known “use it or lose it” pressure agencies face at the end of fiscal years. Schumer stayed silent about Austin’s spending. He only found his outrage when a Trump appointee held the checkbook.
Defense spending represents 3.7% of U.S. gross domestic product, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The national debt, meanwhile, is set to eclipse $39 trillion this month. Schumer’s answer? Spend more.
Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute, told Fox News Digital this month that Schumer “conflated” Pentagon spending with the ACA debate to score political points. The real problem, Blase argued, is that the ACA subsidy program is hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars, much of it to people who shouldn’t be enrolled at all.
The numbers are staggering:
Blase called that “significant improper enrollment” and pointed to “unscrupulous” actors gaming the system.
A GAO review found that fraud risks persist in the ACA’s advance tax credit program. In undercover testing for 2025, the ACA marketplace approved coverage for most of the GAO’s made-up applicants. As of September 2025, 18 of 20 fictitious enrollees remained actively covered, and received more than $10,000 a month in subsidies.
Read that again. The federal government paid over $10,000 per month for people who do not exist.
The GAO also flagged tens of thousands of Social Security numbers used for multiple enrollments. This isn’t a paperwork glitch. This is systemic failure.
The Department of Justice has ramped up enforcement. In February, DOJ prosecutors secured 20-year prison sentences for two insurance executives convicted of orchestrating a $233 million ACA fraud scheme by enrolling vulnerable people without their knowledge. On June 30, 2025, former Criminal Division head Matthew Galeotti, joined by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, announced what they called the largest healthcare fraud case in history.
The Trump administration established a new National Fraud Enforcement Division within the DOJ this year, part of a “whole-of-government” effort that grew from uncovering millions of dollars in misuse of federal funds in Minnesota. That division now targets social service programs across multiple states.
Schumer wants to revive the enhanced ACA subsidies introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those credits expired, and the fight over extending them helped fuel a six-week government shutdown last year, the same kind of standoff Senate Democrats have repeatedly forced over spending priorities.
Blase explained why the original subsidies, which remain in place, are already more than generous:
“For the typical enrollee, the government is paying 80% of the premium. For lower income enrollees, the government is paying more than the premium.”
And the taxpayer tab keeps growing. Blase noted that the “taxpayer share of the premium continues to grow on autopilot.” The subsidies flow as advance payments directly to insurers on behalf of eligible enrollees, a pipeline that, as the GAO proved, doesn’t bother to verify whether those enrollees are real.
Blase laid out the perverse incentive cycle plainly:
“So they’re actually harmed because they get no relief, and they have to pay higher taxes so we can send money directly to health insurance companies, and the money that we send directly to health insurance companies just leads them to increase premiums, and it just increases their profits.”
In other words, the people Schumer claims to help, working families, end up paying more. The winners are insurance companies cashing government checks.
Schumer’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Blase’s criticism. That silence is telling. When confronted with evidence of billions wasted on phantom enrollees and convicted fraudsters, the Senate’s top Democrat had nothing to say.
White House spokesman Kush Desai didn’t mince words, calling Schumer’s attack a “vapid PR stunt”:
“If Chuck Schumer really cared about healthcare affordability, he would drop the vapid PR stunts and spend his time working with the Administration and Republicans to pass President Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan to lower premiums and slash drug prices.”
Blase put the core issue even more directly:
“We need to reform the ACA, not throw more taxpayer money at it.”
He added that “government subsidies don’t make the coverage more affordable. They make it more expensive overall because you have to consider the taxpayer amount.”
Schumer wants Americans to be outraged about recliners and ice cream machines at the Pentagon. Fair enough, no one likes waste. But he demands that same public ignore a program where the government pays $10,000 a month for people who don’t exist, where 35% of enrollees never use their plans, and where convicted fraudsters stole $233 million by enrolling victims without their knowledge.
The enhanced ACA credits expired for a reason. Congress let them lapse because the program’s integrity couldn’t justify the cost. Nothing has changed, except the fraud evidence has gotten worse.
You don’t fix a leaking ship by turning up the water pressure. You fix the leak. Chuck Schumer doesn’t want to fix anything. He wants a talking point, and he wants you to pay for it.
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