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Minnesota wasn’t the only place where scammers swiped billions from taxpayers: Turns out the Biden Department of Housing and Urban Development rushed $5 billion in rental assistance to “ineligible” tenants, including dead ones, and others with “non-conforming Social Security numbers.”
The more government shells out, the more that gets ripped off.
A new audit report from HUD’s inspector general notes, practically as an aside, that more than 200,000 tenants with “eligibility issues” were granted $4.3 billion in “questionable payments” through non-federal housing providers.
These payments added up to more than one quarter of the $16 billion committed to rental assistance to non-federal parties.
Team Biden “placed substantial trust and responsibility” in these providers, but “did not provide HUD with effective tools, technology, or access to the evidence necessary to verify” that the payments were correct.
Fact is, the White House didn’t really care about where the money went: It handed out hundreds of billions in pandemic-related “aid” without applying even rudimentary controls to suss out fraud.
In 2023, the Small Business Administration admitted that, “in a rush to swiftly disburse” money, it had “weakened or removed the controls necessary to prevent fraudsters” from accessing $1.2 trillion in Paycheck Protection and other disaster funds.
As a result, the SBA determined it had “disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent” loans and grants.
True, there will always be cheats and scammers who take advantage of well-meaning programs.
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But HUD reports that the Biden team directed the agency “to push funding out the door with minimal oversight.”
That echoes the last days of the Biden administration, when officials were practically “throwing gold bars off the Titanic,” as one said, trying to shovel as much money as possible into their allies’ coffers before the clock ran out.
News from Minnesota, and now HUD, is exposing fraud and theft of a magnitude — hundreds of billions of dollars — unseen in human history. Heck, it’s more than the entire economies of many nations put together!
Yes, America is a rich, generous nation that takes care of those truly in need, so some level of spending for social services is certainly warranted.
But officials need to watch that those levels don’t get out of hand. And that, especially when the amounts are large, robust controls and oversight are in place.
After all, if government cash is going to the wrong people, less is left for those who truly need it.