Biden asks Congress for $1.6 BILLION to fix widespread covid fraud

President Joe Biden is asking Congress for $1.6 billion to crack down on fraud stemming from the government’s coronavirus pandemic relief programs. 

The request comes ahead of a vow by House Republicans to investigate trillions of dollars in COVID pandemic aid that was approved under both Biden and President Donald Trump.

Shortly after parts of the U.S. economy were shut down in the wake of the coronavirus, Congress authorized trillions in relief measures designed to help businesses, local governments and individuals who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

Nearly $6 trillion was authorized – some under Biden and some under Trump. That’s more than the government spent annually before the pandemic. And some of the programs were subject to fraud.

‘On the whole, those programs did enormous good,’ said White House adviser Gene Sperling, who is leading the funding request. ‘There were also cases where guardrails were unnecessarily lowered, which led to unnecessary and massive fraud.’

Some money has already been recovered.

The Secret Service last year got back $286 million sent out in fraudulently obtained loans through the Small Business Administration. The Justice Department is also investigating fraud cases related to the Paycheck Protection Program, unemployment insurance and Medicare.

But more stolen money is believed to be out there. 

A Washington Post investigation found that fraudsters soon siphoned away billions of dollars from key federal agencies and watchdog groups admit that they still do not know the full extent of the losses. 

And the government likely awarded about $5.4 billion in COVID aid to people with questionable Social Security numbers, the federal watchdog group Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) said last month.

Larry Turner, the Labor Department’s inspector general, said at a congressional hearing last month that the federal government might have paid out $191 billion in improper pandemic unemployment benefits.

Claims for jobless benefits surged in 2020 when about 22 million jobs were lost in the early months of the COVID pandemic and the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%, the highest on records going back to the late 1940s.

Biden’s funding request includes $600 million to help investigate large-scale fraud by criminal syndicates, $600 million for fraud and identity theft protection, and $400 million to help victims who have had their identities stolen, according to the White House. 

The president is also pushing new policies that would ensure people could not obtain federal assistance in the names of other people, dead people and prisoners – which is one of the ways pandemic funds were stolen.

Additionally, Biden wants Congress to increase the statute of limitations on serious pandemic unemployment insurance fraud to 10 years. 

Sperling, on a briefing call with reporters, said he believes lawmakers from both parties can find common ground on the issue, adding that Republicans have raised concern about waste, fraud and abuse. 

Republicans have already made an effort address fraud and recover stolen unemployment benefits. 

One GOP bill would allow states to keep a quarter of recovered fraudulent overpayments and use some of those recovered funds to improve fraud prevention for different programs.

Biden plans to include his funding proposal as part of his budget request for fiscal year 2024, which White House is set to release on March 9. 

It will come at a time Republicans have vowed to crack down on federal spending.