Minnesota Governor Tim Walz faced sharp questioning at a House Oversight hearing and repeatedly stumbled when asked for basic numbers on a dramatic rise in autism spending and alleged Medicaid fraud under his watch.

At the hearing, Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace pressed Gov. Walz about Minnesota’s skyrocketing autism expenditures and he came up empty-handed. When asked for a 2017 baseline figure, Walz could not produce the number on the spot.

“I don’t have those numbers in front of me, Congresswoman.”

The public record shows the 2017 autism spend was $1 million and by 2024 had climbed to $343 million, a 34,000 percent increase in seven years. That dramatic rise drew immediate skepticism from lawmakers who see it as evidence of systemic failure rather than isolated error.

“Did you prepare for this hearing today?”

Federal prosecutors later announced that investigators uncovered roughly $9 billion in federal Medicaid funds stolen from 14 Minnesota programs since 2018. That figure sits alongside the Feeding Our Future prosecutions, where authorities say at least 78 people connected with the program defrauded the federal government of up to $300 million.

Prosecutors have charged 92 people across schemes involving child nutrition, housing services, and autism programs, and reporting indicated that 82 of those defendants are Somali. Questions kept coming back to oversight: how could that scale of diversion occur without earlier detection by state systems?

It also emerged that Walz had connections with at least some of the refugees charged in the fraud, though the specifics remain murky. Those ties only deepen the political and ethical questions about what the governor knew and when he knew it.

Walz appeared at the hearing alongside Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, yet attention stayed fixed on the governor’s inability to answer straightforward budget questions. Under pressure, Walz snapped at Mace and pushed back hard against the tone of the exchange.

“I’m the governor of Minnesota, congresswoman – I’m not here to be your prop for your obsession!”

That response provided sound bite fodder but did not supply the missing numbers. The hearing highlighted a wider pattern: sprawling federal funds, ballooning program budgets, and failures of accountability at multiple levels of state government.

The back-and-forth included a pointed dig from Mace about clarity and competence: she asked whether Walz could define what a woman and connected that to the ability to define fraud. Her blunt line landed with purpose and forced the governor into a defensive posture.

“If you can’t even define what a woman is, you can’t define fraud.”

Walz announced in January that he would not seek another term as governor and then formally abandoned a re-election bid last month. The man who served as Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024 is now a lame duck overseeing what critics say may be one of the largest pandemic-era fraud schemes in the country.

Minnesota Democrats face a bruised brand going forward: Senator Amy Klobuchar, who won re-election in 2024 with over 56 percent of the vote, remains a dominant figure in state politics. Klobuchar has previously topped 60 percent in 2018 and over 65 percent in 2012, and she could either seek another Senate term or eye the governor’s office.

Republicans point to the fraud revelations as proof that accountability matters and that lax oversight corrodes public trust in governance. President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign emphasized record Republican turnout reshaping battlegrounds, and the Minnesota scandal fits the narrative about consequences for the party in power when federal dollars vanish without clear scrutiny.

Consider the timeline laid out at the hearing and in public records:

• 2017: $1 million in autism expenditure in Minnesota
• 2018: The year investigators say the Medicaid theft began across 14 programs
• 2024: $343 million in autism expenditure
• December 2024: Federal investigators announce $9 billion in stolen Medicaid funds

Spending exploded and fraud followed. State systems that should have detected these problems failed to do so, and when Congress called the governor to account he showed up without the figures on hand and pushed back at oversight as if it were a nuisance.

Taxpayers in all 50 states funded Minnesota’s Medicaid programs and deserve clear answers and functioning oversight. Nine billion dollars is not an obsession. It’s a crime scene.