Joe’s ‘Fraud’ Con: More Cash To Burn

LIKE a drunkard pledging to drink one less pint of whiskey a year, President Biden is promising to rescue Americans from COVID fraud. Investigators estimate that $600 billion out of the $5 trillion in federal COVID spending was plundered. Biden’s plan to spend another $1.6 billion will solve the problem — or at least burnish his image. House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) aptly labeled COVID fraud “the greatest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history.” Congress and Presidents Donald Trump and Biden sought to spend COVIDrelief money as quickly as possible while asking few if any questions.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz derided the “safeguards” for one of the most plundered programs: “Apply and sign and tell us that you’re really entitled to the money.”

Almost $200 billion in unemploytity ment benefits were swindled, delivered to practically anyone who filled out a form and concocted a false name. “Overseas organized crime groups flooded state unemployment systems with bogus online claims,” siphoning off millions.

Prison inmates, drug gangs and foreign racketeers easily plundered the program.

Per Team Biden, federal intervention is necessary to deter state-government bureaucrats from sending jobless benefits to Nigeria.

Biden will soon propose legislative reforms to “require states to use the tools already at their disposal to identify fraud.” If only

Washington’s Best and Brightest thought of that earlier!

In his State of the Union, Biden promised, “Every dollar we put into fighting fraud, the taxpayer will get back at least 10 times as much.” If that’s the case, wouldn’t fraud prosecutions pay for themselves?

A hefty “Sweeping Pandemic Anti-Fraud Proposal” reveals ambitions for the White House: For a mere $1.6 billion, Team Biden would “Formalize ‘Gold Standard’ meetings” that bring together White House and agency officials “so everyone could hear all concerns . . . before major implementation started.” Instead of a high-falutin’ new initiative, why not guarantee fancy donuts for attendees?

Biden wants to “invest $150 million to ensure lessons learned are applied.” Is that necessary because bureaucrats are slow learners? Does that include buying “Hooked on Phonics” for every GS-12 in the Labor Department?

How many times do taxpayers have to pay to end the same boondoggle? Biden is proposing major funding to stop unemployment fraud even though his American Rescue Plan already allocated $2 billion to curtail such abuses.

Outlays include “$246 million for tiger teams” to “identify risks and implement fraud prevention solutions.” Are the bureaucrats getting gold-plated tiger costumes?

Biden proposes spending hundreds of millions to prevent identheft, including creating a “one-stop remediation experience for victims” at the Federal Trade Commission’s IdentityTheft.gov. The FTC is the same agency that promised to block robocalls with its “Do Not Call” list — one of the biggest flops since New Coke.

There are already some excellent inspector generals and prosecutors hot on the trail of COVID fraudsters. Most of the spending items in the “Sweeping Proposal” won’t cause swindlers to lose any sleep.

The real purpose of Biden’s $1.6 billion program is to convince taxpayers Biden gives a damn about fraud. Yet, at the same time, Biden continues twisting the law to defraud taxpayers by forgiving $500 billion in federal student loans.

He’s also failing to crack down on other programs plagued by fraud (such as federal food assistance). And the prez just nominated Julie Su to be the new Secretary of Labor — though up to $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits were paid when she was California’s top labor official.

Rather than squandering tax dollars on “tiger teams” and “‘Gold Standard’ meetings,” the best antifraud measure would be a COVID truth commission (recently recommended in these pages).

Summon Trump, Biden, lawmakers and top officials to testify under oath: Why did they approve COVID relief programs that were practically designed to maximize looting? What steps, if any, did they take to curb losses after pilfering reached epidemic levels?

The most important lesson: Don’t trust politicians with boundless power. Exposing the bipartisan failure on COVID is the best vaccine Americans can receive against being mercilessly plundered the next time pols proclaim a national emergency.

Almost $200 billion in unemployment swindled.’ benefits were