People wearing face masks are seen at a subway station in New York, the United States, on Dec. 7, 2022. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)
The problems plaguing unemployment insurance are described as the "greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history."
NEW YORK, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government may have misspent roughly 191 billion U.S. dollars in pandemic unemployment benefits, a top federal watchdog told Congress on Wednesday, as Washington continues to uncover the vast and still-growing extent of the waste, fraud and abuse targeting coronavirus aid.
"The new estimate -- computed by Larry D. Turner, the inspector general of the Labor Department -- galvanized House Republicans as they intensified their scrutiny of the roughly 5 trillion dollars in emergency funds approved since the start of the crisis," reported The Washington Post.
As the inquiry was opened, the problems plaguing unemployment insurance were described as the "greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in American history."
The money helped rescue the economy from the worst crisis since the Great Depression, but "it also invited an unprecedented wave of theft and abuse, as criminals seized on the government's generosity -- and its race to disburse aid -- to bilk state and federal agencies for massive sums," said the report.
Top watchdogs told the House Ways and Means Committee that they still cannot compute the total amount of federal COVID aid subject to fraud and abuse, but Turner's testimony noted that the country's misspending on unemployment benefits, in particular, may be far greater than previously known, it added. ■
