Chuck Schumer called Pete Hegseth a "crook" for Pentagon spending last week.
Then someone checked what Biden's Defense Secretary spent the year before.
It was $79 billion – and Schumer never said a word.
The Post That Blew Up in His Face
Schumer went to X with a viral attack on Hegseth, listing out the Pentagon's September spending: king crab, Steinway grand pianos, Herman Miller recliners, ice cream machines.
He put the total at $93.4 billion and declared it roughly equal to three years of Obamacare subsidies.
Social media users checked his math – not on the Obamacare number, but on the outrage.
Lloyd Austin spent $79.1 billion in September 2024 doing the same thing.
Agencies face pressure to burn through their budgets before October 1 or lose the money – a pattern across every administration for decades.
There is no record of Schumer saying anything about Austin's tab.
Austin's Apple spending was $5.1 million. Hegseth's was $5.3 million. Both spent more than $1 million on musical instruments.
The White House called Schumer's post a "vapid PR stunt."
Kush Desai said if Schumer actually cared about healthcare affordability, he'd stop the stunts and work with the administration on Trump's plan to lower premiums and slash drug prices.
Schumer's office did not respond to Fox News Digital for comment.
The Fraud Problem He Wants You to Ignore
Here is what Schumer left out of his Obamacare pitch: the program he wants to fund with your money is riddled with phantom enrollees, fake identities, and criminal brokers.
And the people getting hurt first are the workers paying for it.
If you get insurance through your employer, you got nothing from Obamacare.
No subsidy, no free plan, no benefit of any kind.
You paid higher taxes so the government could send money directly to insurance companies – and the insurance companies used it to raise premiums and pocket the difference.
Paragon Health Institute president Brian Blase put it directly: government subsidies drive up the total cost of coverage because the taxpayer share is part of the real price, and insurers raise premiums accordingly.
Meanwhile the program itself is rotten at the foundation.
An estimated 3 to 4 million ACA enrollees are phantoms – either completely fictional or people who have no idea they're even enrolled.
More than 6.4 million enrollees reported incomes low enough for fully subsidized plans even though many likely earned more.
And 35% of all ACA enrollees in 2024 never used their coverage once. Not one doctor visit. Not one prescription. Nothing.
In a normal insurance market, Blase noted, about 15% of enrollees don't file claims in a given year.
The ACA's rate is more than double that – and it spiked after Biden introduced the COVID-era subsidies that made plans free.
The Wall Street Journal calculated the damage: tens of billions in taxpayer dollars flowed to insurers and brokers for enrollees who never received a single medical service.
The Government Proved It Was Real
This is not a talking point. Federal investigators ran the test.
The Government Accountability Office created fictional identities and submitted them to the ACA marketplace.
Every single fake application for 2024 was approved.
Eighteen of those fictitious enrollees remained actively covered as of September 2025 – collecting more than $10,000 per month combined in taxpayer subsidies.
The GAO also flagged tens of thousands of Social Security numbers used for multiple enrollments.
GAO ran this same test in 2015. They ran it again in 2016. Fake applicants were approved both times.
More than ten years of warnings, billions spent on verification systems, and the ACA marketplace is still waving through people who don't exist.
CMS received 275,000 complaints in just eight months of 2024 from Americans who were enrolled in or switched into plans without their consent.
https://twitter.com/pray365247/status/2032185081284997121?s=20
Two insurance executives learned the hard way that someone was finally paying attention.
In February, DOJ prosecutors secured 20-year prison sentences for both after a jury convicted them of running a $233 million ACA fraud scheme – targeting vulnerable people, enrolling them without consent, and collecting the subsidy checks.
What Schumer is fighting to extend are the Biden-era enhanced subsidies – the COVID emergency addition that created zero-dollar plans, relaxed income verification, and gave unscrupulous brokers the opening to enroll anyone, real or not, and collect a taxpayer check.
The original Obamacare subsidies are permanent. They're already generous.
Democrats want the bonus layer – the one that built the fraud machine.
Schumer wants you looking at lobster for the troops.
The $39 trillion national debt keeps climbing, and his solution is more money into a program that just approved fake people at a 100% clip.
Sources:
- Ashley Oliver, "Fraud scrutiny clouds Schumer's Obamacare credit push after his Pentagon 'luxury' spending jab," Fox News, March 17, 2026.
- Ashley Oliver, "Chuck Schumer criticizes Hegseth Pentagon spending despite Austin's record," Fox News, March 12, 2026.
- Brian Blase, "Ghostbusting ACA Fraud: Millions Who Don't Use Their Health Insurance Expose Abuse in the Program," Paragon Health Institute, October 1, 2025.
- Brian Blase, "GAO Probe Finds ACA at High Risk for Fraud: 96% of Fake Applications Approved," Paragon Health Institute, December 3, 2025.
- House Ways and Means Committee, "Watchdog Finds Consumer Harm and Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted in Health Care Fraud in Affordable Care Act Plans," December 3, 2025.
- House Budget Committee, "The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: The Phantom Patients of Obamacare," House Budget Committee, 2025.