01/13/2023

House Oversight Panel to Probe Fraud in COVID Unemployment Aid

The hearing is the first under the committee’s new chairman, Rep. James Comer

House Republicans plan to convene a hearing on Feb. 1 to probe waste, fraud and abuse in the government's roughly $5 trillion in coronavirus aid, as they seek to uncover how much theft targeted the nation's unemployment insurance program.

The hearing marks the first such gathering of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee under its new chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-KY.), who stressed in a statement that his panel intends to focus in part this year on exploring "hundreds of billions of dollars in spending under the guise of pandemic relief."

At the height of the public health crisis, Democrats and Republicans enhanced federal jobless aid and expanded eligibility, helping millions of Americans who were unexpectedly thrust out of work overnight. But the government's generosity — and long-known gaps in the nation's unemployment insurance system — opened the door for as much as $163 billion in fraudulent or mistaken payments, The Washington Post found in its year-long investigation, the COVID Money Trail.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.