Government spending and fraud are regular dance partners, but rarely as cheek to cheek as they were with unemployment payments during the pandemic. A new report adds more evidence about the failure to protect taxpayers.
The Government Accountability Office this week released a review of the Labor Department’s handling of $878 billion in unemployment insurance handouts from April 2020 to September 2022. Labor estimates that fraud in its normal unemployment program hit $8.5 billion from July 2020 through June 2021. That’s 8.6% of outlays.