The debate over expanded unemployment benefits has proven particularly fractious, given that the $2 trillion CARES Act Congress passed in March set up a broken economic system where nearly 70 percent of the unemployed can get paid more in benefits while staying home than they would make by going back to work. Yet as important as the ramifications of this distorted big government labor policy are, one largely overlooked consequence of the massive expansion of unemployment is skyrocketing fraud and abuse.
A new report from the fiscally conservative Foundation for Government Accountability exposes the stunning extent to which fraud has corrupted the hastily-crafted unemployment expansion. FGA Senior Research Fellow Josh Waters found that fraud will consume more taxpayer dollars under this expansion than the entire unemployment program paid out in 2019.
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