Minnesota State Senators Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) and Mark Koran (R-North Branch) applauded Republican members of Minnesota’s Congressional delegation for pressing Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Education Commissioner Willie Jett to provide information related to the oversight failures that led to the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, which has been described as the largest COVID-related fraud in the country.

The Senators issued the following statement:

“Feeding our Future fraudsters were able to flourish due to an astounding lack of scrutiny and oversight by Gov. Tim Walz and his administration. $500 million of taxpayer dollars was given to Feeding Our Future and Partners in Nutrition. Sixty people stole more than half of that money – over $250 million – to make themselves rich. We know the Walz Administration did not do enough, fast enough, to stop the fraud, but they continue to stonewall requests for detailed answers and accountability.

The Walz administration failed Minnesota families when it allowed blatant fraudsters to exploit Minnesota taxpayers to make themselves wealthy. We need full transparency about the oversight and management failures that enabled this fraud. We applaud Congresswoman Foxx, Congressman Emmer, Congressman Finstad, Congresswoman Fischbach, and Congressman Stauber for demanding MDE turn over all documents related to their oversight of Feeding Our Future. We need answers on how and why MDE ignored all the warning signs and allowed over $250 million to be stolen while preventing any real oversight or auditing. We need to find out what the Walz administration knew, when they knew it, and what they did after they knew it.

“We look forward to seeing the results of their request.”