00:00Without further ado, let me kick it over to Andrew Ferguson, who's going to talk a little
00:03bit about how we're going to work with these state attorneys general. And it's attorneys
00:07general, right? Not attorney generals. It's very counterintuitive. We've got to change
00:13this. Maybe the group here together, we've got enough of a critical mass of attorneys
00:17generals to change it. But Andrew, attorneys general, I'm never going to be able to get
00:22that right. And the media, of course, is going to make fun of me for it. Andrew, over to
00:25you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. And welcome to all the state attorneys general.
00:29I'm very grateful you've traveled all this way to discuss one of the most pressing problems
00:35this nation confronts. When I was solicitor general of Virginia, I served alongside many
00:40of you and fought against the Biden administration to protect our border, our religious liberty
00:45and our right to keep and bear arms. And today we're here to talk about another problem that
00:50we need to partner with you to fight that the Obama administration and Biden administration
00:54made much worse, which is widespread fraud against our benefits programs. Our benefits programs
01:00and our whole society was designed for a high trust people. The American people rightly expect
01:06that their fellow citizens will deal with them and with the government honestly and fairly.
01:11That's why for up until the last decade or so, shelves in our grocery stores and our pharmacies
01:16were open and readily accessible. We weren't accustomed to seeing security guards outside of banks
01:22or jewelry stores. We didn't have to worry about organized retail theft or industrial scale scammers
01:27of the type you all protect your citizens from every day. Nor did we have to worry about
01:31piratical fraudsters raiding our benefits program. But sadly, that is no longer true. It's become
01:37clear that huge groups of people in this country are taking advantage of our longstanding culture
01:42of trust to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people. I think a brief example would be
01:48illustrative. Just this weekend, I was shopping at a big home improvement store to buy a drill to do
01:54some home improvement. And I had to hit a call button and wait 15 minutes for a sales associate to
01:59come
01:59unlock a steel cage and a steel padlock to get access to a drill. It's why deodorant is now locked
02:06behind
02:06plastic windows at pharmacies. It's why security guards are seen at every store in America. The social trust
02:13has evaporated and people are taking advantage of it. And the same is true with our federal benefits programs.
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