Let's Cut Some Spending: $872M in COVID aid went to federal employee bonuses

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America’s national debt is $33 trillion with no end to massive government spending in sight. Inflation is the number one issue in every poll, anywhere. People are genuinely hurting. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, government spending has been on steroids. The government is spending two trillion dollars more than it is taking in.

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars - and as you’ll see, the list is endless.

To save America, Congress must reassert themselves as stewards of taxpayers' recources!

Today’s offering: $872 million in COVID aid went to bonuses for federal employees!

Reason reports:

Federal funds intended to be used for pandemic relief efforts were used instead to pad the paychecks of government employees from coast to coast.

In San Diego, California, for example, some 9,595 county workers were awarded bonuses funded with more than $27 million in federal COVID aid, according to a Treasury Department program set up to track the $350 billion in pandemic funds distributed to state and local governments as part of the American Rescue Plan. Bonuses of $2,500 were paid to County of San Diego employees working in "detention and medical facilities" and other places where county officials deemed "COVID-19 exposure was more likely." But employees who faced no heightened risk of job-related exposure were rewarded with $1,500 bonuses as well.

In Lexington, Kentucky, public workers deemed to have "held positions and performed duties" that included a "greater risk of contracting COVID-19" were rewarded with $5,000 bonuses, according to the Treasury's records…

In all, state and local governments have reported spending more than $872 million on so-called "premium pay" for 404,253 of their employees, according to Reason's review of the Treasury Department's data. That's in addition, of course, to the direct stimulus checks that many of those same workers likely received from the federal government.

This is beyond absurd.

COVID relief was mismanaged and a colossal example of government waste from the start.

Government employees getting bonuses out of it is just another reflection of that more than anything else.