Biden using little effort to reclaim billions stolen in Covid aid package

 DailyWire:

The Biden administration should focus more on investigating and remedying billions of dollars worth of COVID-19 aid fraud before pumping out more of such spending, Bloomberg’s editorial board wrote on Monday.

In an op-ed published Monday morning, Bloomberg pointed out that the Secret Service estimates that $100 billion in COVID-19 relief funds may have been doled out in fraudulent claims, corrupt deals, or to dead people. The article suggests that Secret Service estimates may be too conservative, however. The editors write:

Even that may be understating the problem. As little as 23% of the $800 billion doled out by the Paycheck Protection Program actually found its way into workers’ pockets. A Department of Labor study estimated that more than $87 billion in emergency unemployment benefits were improperly paid. The Small Business Administration has (among other blunders) disbursed more than $6.2 billion to loan applicants it now suspects of identity theft. Somehow, the Internal Revenue Service managed to issue 2.2 million stimulus checks — worth about $3.5 billion — to dead people.

Only in government could such calamitous neglect be considered business as usual.

So far, the federal government has approved roughly $6 trillion in COVID-19 funds. In providing the funds to Americans in need, however, the government bungled operations with a lack of oversight and communications, leading to “the largest oversight challenge” of President Joe Biden’s administration, Biden’s chief coordinator for COVID-19 spending said last month.

“There is no question that the immense fraud that took place at the crush of the pandemic in 2020, particularly in small-business loans and unemployment insurance, is the largest oversight challenge the Biden administration inherited,” White House senior advisor Gene Sperling said.
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There should be a DOJ task force working on this problem.  They could also get immediate help from outside counsel by paying them a percentage of the amount recovered.  That would probably spur a return of billions back to the treasury.  They could also turn material over to the DOJ for prosecuting the criminals.