The more the onion gets peeled back, the more it looks like the Democrat Party has been heavily invested for years in perpetrating fraud via daycare centers. First, it was the mostly Somali-operated "learing centers" in Minnesota, and, now, it looks like upwards of $19 billion in taxpayer money was sent by the Biden admin to daycare centers without first verifying that children were actually attending the centers.
As we've learned from Nick Shirley's fantastic coverage from Minnesota, there's apparently a booming market of "ghost centers" that have the signage and the storefronts, but not so much the children. Shirley visited several centers that looked like legitimate operations from the outside, but were revealed to be ghost care businesses operating without children, despite receiving taxpayer funding for child care services.
It turns out that taxpayers have actually been sending gobs of money to daycare centers across the country that weren't required to confirm attendance records – and it's all thanks to former President Joe Biden. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Administration for Children and Families, Biden implemented a series of rules in 2024 "that required states to pay providers before verifying any attendance and before care was delivered."
On Monday, HHS announced it was rescinding the Biden-era rules and rolling back "provisions in the 2024 Child Care and Development Fund rule that weakened oversight and increased the risk of waste, fraud and abuse in federally-funded state child care — including programs now under investigation in Minnesota."
The Biden administration didn’t require verification that kids were attending child care centers before sending them as much as $19 billion in federal funding. Today HHS announced we are reversing that Biden-era practice and restoring “attendance-based billing.” pic.twitter.com/o9HbQCFIoF
— HHS Rapid Response (@HHSResponse) January 5, 2026
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said of the move, “Congress appropriated this funding to support working families and ensure children have safe places to grow and learn. Loopholes and fraud diverted that money to bad actors instead. Today, we are correcting that failure and returning these funds to the working families they were meant to serve.”
Under Biden, states were required to base their payments on enrollment numbers and not on verified attendance numbers. Not only that, states had to pay child care providers in advance of the services, meaning taxpayer money – an estimated $19.3 million since the rules were enacted – was sent to providers who hadn't yet provided any childcare services.
“Paying providers upfront based on paper enrollment instead of actual attendance invites abuse,” said Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill. “In Minnesota, we’ve seen credible and widespread allegations of fraudulent daycare providers who were not caring for children at all. The reforms we are enacting will make fraud harder to perpetrate.”
Under HHS’s rule changes:
- Attendance-based billing will be restored. States may require payment based on verified attendance rather than enrollment alone.
- Upfront payments will no longer be required. States may again pay providers after care is delivered.
- Voucher flexibility will return. States are no longer steered toward contracts over parent-directed vouchers, restoring parental choice.
The Biden-era rule changes are now subject to a 30-day public comment period, according to HHS.
That's another wrong being righted ... and an untold number left to go.
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