Like an alcoholic promising to drink one less pint of whiskey a year, President Joe Biden is promising to protect Americans from the covid hoax.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-K.) aptly labeled the Covid fraud “the largest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history.” Congress and Presidents Donald Trump and Biden have sought to spend the Covid-relief money as quickly as possible while raising few questions.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz scoffed at the “protection” for one of the most looted programs: “Apply and sign and tell us you actually deserve the money.”
About $200 billion in federal unemployment benefits were fraudulently distributed, delivered to practically anyone in the world who filled out a form and made up a false name. “Foreign organized crime groups flood the state’s unemployment system with false online claims,” siphoning off millions of dollars, NBC News reported. Jail inmates, drug gangs and foreign racketeers easily looted the program.
According to Team Biden, federal intervention is necessary to prevent state-government bureaucrats from sending unemployment benefits to Nigeria.
Biden will soon propose legislative reforms to “require states to use tools already at their disposal to identify fraud.” If only Washington’s best and brightest thought that first!
In his State of the Union address last month, Biden promised, “Every dollar we put into fighting fraud, the taxpayer will get back at least 10 times that.” If so, wouldn’t the fraud lawsuits pay for themselves?
A hefty “sweeping pandemic anti-fraud proposal” fact sheet reveals ambitions for the White House:
For just $1.6 billion, Team Biden will “formalize ‘gold standard’ meetings” that bring together White House and agency officials “so that everyone can hear all the concerns and issues at the same time, before the big implementation.” .” Instead of a high-falutin’ new initiative, why not guarantee fancy donuts for all attendees of those weekly meetings?
- Biden proposed investing $150 million to “ensure lessons learned are applied going forward.” Is this $150 million necessary because federal bureaucrats are notoriously slow learners? Does this include purchasing “Hooked on Phonics” for every GS-12 in the Department of Labor?
- How many times do taxpayers have to pay to end the same boodoggle? Biden is proposing massive new funding to curb unemployment fraud even as his US rescue plan is already set. $2 billion To prevent such abuse.
- Includes “$246 million for Tiger Teams” to “identify risks and implement fraud prevention solutions.” Are bureaucrats getting gold-plated tiger suits or what?
- Biden has proposed spending millions to prevent identity theft, including creating a “one-stop redress 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.
Some of Biden’s initiatives would cost little or nothing, such as allowing the Labor Department’s inspector general to “easily access multi-state data to detect incidents of multi-state fraud where the same identity Inappropriately used to apply for benefits in many states.”
There are already some excellent inspector generals and prosecutors on the trail of the covid fraudsters. Most of the laundry list of spending items in the White House “sweeping proposal” won’t let fraudsters sleep.
The real purpose of Biden’s $1.6 billion program is to convince taxpayers that Biden doesn’t give a damn about fraud. Yet, at the same time, Biden continues to flout the law to cheat taxpayers by forgiving $500 billion in federal student loans.
He has also failed to curb other programs plagued by fraud (such as federal food assistance). And Prez just named Julie Sue as the new secretary of labor — even though California’s top labor official paid out up to $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits.
Instead of wasting tax dollars on “tiger teams” and “gold standard” meetings, the best anti-fraud measure would be a Covid Truth Commission (recently recommended in these pages).
Summons Trump, Biden, and a busload of lawmakers and top officials to testify under oath: Why did they approve Covid relief programs that were actually designed to maximize looting? What steps have they taken to contain the damage since it reached epidemic levels?
The pandemic’s most important lesson: Don’t trust politicians with unlimited power. Exposing the profound bipartisan failure on Covid is the best vaccine Americans can get against being brutally robbed the next time they declare a national emergency.
James Boward is the author of 10 books and a fellow at the Brownstone Institute.
