Official: $191 billion in jobless aid may have been misspent

The U.S. government may have misspent roughly $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits, a top federal watchdog told Congress on Wednesday, as Washington continues to uncover the vast and still-growing extent of the waste, fraud and abuse targeting coronavirus aid.

The new estimate — computed by Larry D. Turner, the inspector general of the Labor Department — galvanized House Republicans as they intensified their scrutiny of the roughly $5 trillion in emergency funds approved since the start of the crisis.

Turner presented the information at a hearing Wednesday convened by Rep. Jason T. Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, according to testimony shared early with The Washington Post.

Opening the inquiry, Smith described the problems plaguing unemployment insurance as the “greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history.”

In doing so, Smith pledged additional oversight still to come: “The new Republican majority is turning on the lights,” he said.

When millions of Americans suddenly found themselves thrust out of a job in early 2020, Democrats and Republicans banded together to approve a historic expansion of the country’s unemployment insurance program. Their efforts — signed into law starting under President Donald Trump — at one point added an extra $600 to workers’ weekly checks and provided new benefits to those who previously would not have qualified for federal help.

The money helped rescue the economy from the worst crisis since the Great Depression. But it also invited an unprecedented wave of theft and abuse, as criminals seized on the government’s generosity - and its race to disburse aid - to bilk state and federal agencies for massive sums.

On Wednesday, top watchdogs told the House Ways and Means Committee that they still cannot compute the total amount of federal COVID aid subject to fraud and abuse.