The five trillion dollars that the U.S. Government invested to alleviate the plight of those affected by the COVID pandemic has led to what may be "the largest fraud" in the history of the country. The Alliance for the Protection of Taxpayers reports that at least $163 billion was allegedly improperly disbursed. In addition, the organization regrets that these subsidies are one of the causes of the current high inflation.
The absence of adequate supervision is one of the main reasons why this figure has been reached, criticizes Dan Savickas, the organization's director of technology policy: "These funds came with very few safeguards to ensure that they ended up in the hands of the families and businesses that really needed them." This problem is not limited to this specific concept, but is widespread in the Administration. This was denounced by David Williams, president of the Alliance for Taxpayer Protection.
4.13 dollars of cost to the taxpayer for each dollar of aid
" Each dollar of aid is estimated to have cost each taxpayer $4.13," Savickas analyzed. "This is not to mention also the inflation that occurred as a result of this profligate spending," he remonstrates.
The analyst explained in Just The News the main defrauded figures:
– The latest report from the Department of Labor's inspector general reports that 1,000 people have been criminally charged with unemployment insurance fraud since the start of the pandemic. The document states that $45.6 billion is under investigation for having been delivered to individuals who applied in various states, with Social Security numbers of deceased people, with the identifier of federal prisoners or through suspicious emails.
– The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cannot justify the release of $3.7 billion in COVID aid.
– The Department of Justice denounced 47 people for their alleged participation in the 250 million scam destined for a children's feeding program.
– More than 1 billion paid to requests from IP addresses located in Russia, China, Iran or Cuba were detected.
– The House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis suspects that 84 billion of the 800 billion delivered in Check Protection Loans (PPP) was obtained by cheating.
Inflation, the second consequence
For his part, Mike Palicz of Americans for Tax Reform noted that "it's not an exaggeration that this is probably the biggest fraud the country has ever seen." But it is also a fraud with a second pernicious consequence for Americans:
The main problem for voters at the moment is inflation. That this is driven by spending that has gone to record fraud is infuriating.
Moreover, experts stress that the 163 billion is surely a short estimate. "No one really knows what the real number is, except that it 's really big, which is scary," Palicz said. The expert harshly criticized the Biden Administration's management of the aid: "There was a complete lack of oversight and safeguards from the beginning" and the Democratic administration "showed no interest in providing oversight".
"The money actually defrauded may never be discovered"
Savickas agrees with this assessment: "Surely, we can there is more fraud that has not yet been uncovered and may never be discovered". The Alliance criticizes the fact that Biden "now simultaneously affirms that 'the pandemic is over'. while billions more in aids that -in all likelihood- will will suffer the same wastefulnessThe government needs to take a step back to give taxpayers a break. "The government needs to step back to give taxpayers a break."
According to government sources, some $10 billion has been recovered so far.
