Billions lost to fraud as Biden botches benefits

The government got a lot wrong in its handling of the COVID pandemic.

It turns out doling out unemployment benefits was one of them.

The early days of the pandemic were chaotic. Lockdowns, businesses closing, millions thrown out of work, the battle to secure toilet paper and hand sanitizer. But the government stepped up with pandemic unemployment benefits so that jobless Americans could put food on the table.

Now the Department of Labor’s internal watchdog is estimating that a minimum of $191 billion of those benefits may have been misspent.

As The Hill reported, DOL Inspector General Larry Turner said in testimony submitted Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee that “at least $191 billion in pandemic UI payments could have been improper payments, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.”

While COVID was something heretofore unknown in the U.S., we had distributed money to citizens before. What happened?’

That figure is nearly $30 billion higher than the $163 billion estimate Turner gave in testimony last year to the Democratic-controlled Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Republican Rep. Jason Smith (Mo.), chair of the Ways and Means Panel, called it “the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history, the massive fraud perpetrated in the unemployment insurance program that skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Biden and Co. have been spending billions and trillions since he took office, one would think that keeping track of how money is spent would be a priority. Apparently not.

“With these varying estimates, it’s clear that the Biden Administration and Congress are in the dark about the size and scope of the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history. The new Republican majority is turning on the lights,” Smith said.

The government created four new unemployment programs as the pandemic hit the country to help impacted workers, according to the Government Accountability Office, and the quick dispersal of funds opened up the programs to exploitation.

Benefits were sent out, with more to follow. Politically it was a winner — Capitol Hill was making up for lost paychecks. It just didn’t check to see who many hands were in the cookie jar.

Citing DOL statistics, GAO puts the amount the federal government paid out in unemployment insurance benefits at around $878 billion between April 2020 and September 2022.

GAO said in a report last month “substantial levels of fraud and potential fraud in unemployment insurance (UI) programs during the pandemic.” Though it clarified that no measure “completely and reliably indicates the extent of fraud in UI programs,” GAO estimated that fraud specifically may have exceeded $60 billion.

That’s walking around money to Biden and his cronies, who’ve gotten used to signing legislation that opens the cash spigot for trillions of dollars, but it’s an obscene waste all the same.

It also underscores the fact that when it comes to fiscal sensibility and prudent oversight, this administration hasn’t got a clue.