The Department of Labor\u2019s (DOL) internal watchdog is estimating that a minimum of $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits may have been misspent.
\nDOL Inspector General Larry Turner said in testimony submitted Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee that \u201cat least $191 billion in pandemic UI payments could have been improper payments, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.\u201d
\nThat 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.
\nThe Ways and Means panel, chaired by Republican Rep. Jason Smith\u2002(Mo.), is meeting Wednesday for a hearing on what Smith has called \u201cthe greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history, the massive fraud perpetrated in the unemployment insurance program that skyrocketed with the COVID-19 pandemic.\u201d
\n\u201cWith these varying estimates, it\u2019s 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,\u201d Smith said.
\nThe government created four new unemployment programs as the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country in an effort to help impacted workers, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the quick dispersal of funds opened up the programs to exploitation.
\nCiting 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.
\nGAO said in a report last month \u201csubstantial levels of fraud and potential fraud in unemployment insurance (UI) programs during the pandemic.\u201d Though it clarified that no measure \u201ccompletely and reliably indicates the extent of fraud in UI programs,\u201d GAO estimated that fraud specifically may have exceeded $60 billion.
\nTurner\u2019s testimony says the DOL\u2019s office of inspector general is \u201ccommitted to meeting the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic\u201d and to helping improve \u201cthe efficiency and integrity\u201d of the unemployment insurance program.
\n\u201cStrengthening the UI program to prevent fraud before it occurs and to detect it when it does are key objectives to ensure that unemployed workers expeditiously receive much needed benefits while safeguarding tax dollars directed toward that goal,\u201d Turner wrote.
\nAfter taking control of the lower chamber from Democrats in the midterms, Republicans have put oversight of the Biden administration and scrutiny into the COVID-19 pandemic among their top priorities for probes.<\/p>\n
Thehill<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aUnemployment benefits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Labor\u2019s (DOL) internal watchdog is estimating that a minimum of $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits may have been misspent. DOL Inspector General Larry Turner said in testimony submitted Wednesday to the House Ways and Means Committee that \u201cat least $191 billion in pandemic UI payments could have been improper payments, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1155],"tags":[1733,1760,1636],"class_list":["post-5514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-may","tag-pandemic","tag-watchdog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5516,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5514\/revisions\/5516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}