(PatriotHQ) Just about the time you think Washington can’t get any more dysfunctional they shocked even the most skeptical!
Get this. In the name of unemployment benefits Congress paid out billions to whom? Prisoners, people who don’t exist, abundant houses showing over 145 people living in it with untold numbers of other surrounding houses and then fat checks were issued to the same social security number 40 times over dozens of states! OMG!
At least $191 billion in pandemic unemployment insurance payments have been wrong! The Department of Labor’s inspector general told a House committee on Wednesday at least $191 billion in unemployment benefits could have been given out wrongly during the coronavirus pandemic.
This number is almost $30 billion more than what was told the House Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, which is controlled by Democrats, last year. The new number was based on new information from the Employment Training Administration, which is in charge of directing and overseeing programs.
Larry Turner, the inspector general for the Department of Labor told Congress: “For more than two years, Republicans have been raising the alarm about the biggest theft of taxpayer money in American history: the massive fraud in the unemployment insurance program skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chair of the Ways and Means committee.
Turner said when his office did an audit, they found a claim was filed from a three-bedroom house and used the same email address as 145 other claims.
“The likely scammers got a total of $1,569,762 in unemployment checks,” he said.
Gene Dodaro, the head of the Government Accountability Office, testified based on an analysis of public statements and court documents from the Department of Justice from March 2020 to January 13, 2021, “At least 380 people pleaded guilty to federal charges of cheating unemployment insurance programs, and three people were found guilty in court. At least 40 of the 380 also admitted to fraud in other pandemic relief programs.”
Michael Horowitz, who is the chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, testified since a report came out in December 2021 about problems 16 states had, his committee has seen a rise in the number of states reporting fraud cases involving state workforce agency employees. These states include Washington, Louisiana, and West Virginia.
Also, he said, many states gave benefits to people who weren’t supposed to get them, like prisoners. For example, California says it gave $800 million in benefits to 45,000 prisoners. He said in one case, someone used the same Social Security number to apply for unemployment benefits in 40 states. As a result, $222,532 was paid out by 29 of those states.
Dodaro said, “[The Labor Department] and the states were not ready to handle [unemployment insurance] they didn’t do a good job of managing risks strategically and didn’t have the right internal controls.” YIKES!
In Conclusion: WE ARE DOOMED!
What do you think?
