Senate Republicans have introduced legislation that seeks to recover funds from unemployment fraud and provide incentives for states to recover fraudulent payments.
The Chase COVID Unemployment Fraud Act of 2022 would accelerate efforts to recover fraudulent unemployment payments through pandemic unemployment programs. The lawmakers said that only $4 billion has been recovered thus far.
“The Administration needs to step up and join us in detecting and preventing the massive fraud in federal unemployment insurance programs that we have seen, including systemic fraud, internationally organized criminal fraud rings, and other threats to our systems, programs, and the federal budget,” said U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), one of the bill’s sponsors.
The White House estimated that 19 percent of total COVID unemployment insurance payments were lost to fraud, which amounts to roughly $80 billion. Other estimates say it is closer to an estimated $163 billion lost due to fraud.
“The fraud associated with pandemic unemployment programs reached staggering levels,” U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), also a bill sponsor, said. “Billions of hard-working Americans’ taxpayer dollars that were meant to help out-of-work Americans instead went to criminals and cheats. This legislation will give the states the incentives and tools necessary to recover this stolen money.”
Crapo is ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Portman is ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.