U.S. House Republicans on Wednesday began their promised aggressive oversight of the Biden administration, focusing on what watchdogs described as 'indications of widespread fraud' in federal coronavirus aid programs initiated under then-president Donald Trump.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., arrives for a closed-door meeting with the Republican Conference, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023.
"We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of the greatest theft of American taxpayer dollars in history," said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the committee chairman. The GAO reported in December that an extrapolation of Labor Department data would suggest more than US$60 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments during the pandemic in just that one program. The GAO also warned that such an extrapolation has inherent limitations and should be interpreted with caution.
Some 20 inspectors general work collaboratively to investigate pandemic relief spending. Michael Horowitz, who chairs a committee Congress created in March 2020 to lead oversight of COVID-19 spending, said data analysis is critical to detecting fraud. One of the biggest factors in the COVID fraud that occurred was the need to get dollars out to people and businesses as quickly as possible. Horowitz said it is critical that agencies assess applicant eligibility before payments are sent out, but the Small Business Administration allowed entities applying for Paycheck Protection Program to self-certify they were eligible. He said that resulted in US$3.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the COVID relief programs "were by no means perfect." But he said the result of the programs was the shortest economic recession on record.
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