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Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read and cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.
In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.
Today’s offering: $135 billion stolen during the pandemic!
The National Desk reports:
More than three years after the start of the pandemic new reports continue finding trillions of dollars were misspent on federal aid.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office released this new report showing that $135 billion was stolen during the pandemic.
CEO of Open the Books Adam Andrzejewski joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat to discuss how this happened and how much has been recovered.
"Well, the criminals were able to run wild through our unemployment systems. You know, criminals, con artists and crime syndicates from around the world just racked up huge frauds. And so look, the government is moving too slow now. We're out three years and this latest estimate of one out of every $7 that was stolen from the unemployment system sounds like it's a big number, but it's probably underestimated by at least half," Andrzejewski said.
The report added that Andrzejewski added that "through the myriad of federal programs, you have probably about $200 billion worth of fraud and stolen money out of the unemployment program and $200 billion worth of fraud out of the Small Business Program administered by the Small Business Administration on the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP."
So, $135 billion is a lowball number.
This kind of fiscal recklessness is going to continue to spike inflation, undermining all Americans and their families.
Hurting us in the name of helping us. Unbelievable.