I am wondering if any of you were aware of this or had any thoughts.

Criminals stole billions in COVID-19 unemployment benefits. A new relief bill won’t prevent it from happening again

I had originally read this article but the one above is a bit more up to date.

Pretty staggering in my opinion.  I hope our children and their children and their children don't hate us too much for blindly throwing money away that they have to pay back someday.

I get that some people needed help, I even get that it wasn't anticipated that we would lose billions to unemployment fraud the first go round but we now know better and we are doing it again all the while patting each other on the back for a "big win".

While this sounds a hell of a lot like concern trolling, there are a few things I'd like to say (though I think the article that you posted responds pretty clearly). 

Congress cannot make policy changes like the ones suggested in this article through budget reconciliation. As such, they have given states several billion dollars to improve their unemployment infrastructure (with your article providing California as one example), however these improvements are not without their own drawbacks (including privacy issues and issues with the turnaround time of processing claims). 

However, the implication that you are making that "Oh, the poor children will have to pay this back"... this is the single largest poverty fighting bill in decades. Don't "think of the children" me, when this bill is literally making sure that children don't starve, and make no mistake, this bill is a huge win for Americans and that goes doubly for poor Americans. 

While I would love to make improvements to address these concerns, they are not excuses to do nothing and certainly not an argument that this bill won't provide massive aid to American families. It will, and that should be celebrated.

While I agree it's unfortunate that criminals took some of the money the opinions expressed in this article are kind of disturbing. 

“I wouldn’t let another penny go out until the government puts some of these tools in place to prevent it.” while "At least 10% of the $450 billion allocated last year in expanded unemployment benefits was pocketed by criminals, federal officials estimate."

So because some of the money gets abused we shouldn't help any of the 80-90% of legitimate requests. It's similar to conservatives concerned that welfare gets abused so we should toss out the whole system. 

So you think pushing this through under budget reconciliation was the only means to get this done?

So who is going to pay this back? Future generations seems most likely to me, so "think of the children" is very apt at least if you are looking long term.  Can you look long term?

Do you not agree that this is a band-aid?  How does this fix long term poverty?

At the bold, consider the source - Haywood Talcove, chief executive of information firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions

Their agenda seems pretty obvious.

The CNBC article is older and turns out it is not the one i originally read, just very similar.  I believe the one I originally read was MSNBC.

Why not fix the system.  I know they allotted 100 M for that but it is akin to closing the barn doors after all the animals have already escaped.  They knew about this for the better part of a year but the best bet was to ram the same thing through again? 

I am not advocating for not helping people, I just wish we were smarter about it rather than making some Nigerians billionaires.  It was just staggering to me exactly how much they believe we lost. 

Edit, found the article I originally read:

How billions in pandemic aid was swindled by con artists and crime syndicates

What I often find most insidious is that so many people out there seem to have this mentality of 'if someone benefits from this that doesn't deserve it, I don't want to do it regardless of how many people it helps'. So many of the arguments I see republicans and other right wingers making boil down to this mentality, that something isn't worth doing because there's a chance it can be taken advantage of.

Like...shitty people will do shitty things regardless. you shouldn't just not do something because bad people will take advantage. I'm not going to not help my sister out just because she could shank me and take my dog. The key is to balance the good and the bad, the positives with the potential negatives and adjust accordingly. That's why we have laws. that's why we have rules and regulations and ways to moderate shit.

"Welfare is bad because some people are lazy"
"Trans rights are bogus because some perverts could use it to creep on girls"
"Raising the minimum wage is bad because people will work less"
"Universal healthcare is bad because some wait times might be longer"

Like, sure, there's always going to be some bad things, but like, you still gotta work, it's still illegal as fuck to be a sexual predator, and there are always bad people who break the laws. the issue isn't and never has been about the good vs bad ratio, it's always been just a way to be shitty. IT's not about protecting girls, it's been 'ew, trans people are icky'. It's never been about stopping the system from letting people take advantage, it's 'I had to work, fuck you for being unemployed, die for all I care'.

There's an inherent selfishness about it, and the more I argue these points and the more I observe, the clearer it is the fundamental difference between the right and the left is caring about the self (Selfishness) vs caring for the collective (altruism). The right are inherently selfish, as almost all of their goals revolve around the absolute value of personal freedoms regardless of what it costs the collective, while the left likes to push for mutual responsibility and trying to push bills and enact goals that deliberately make an effort to ensure that the most people are benefitted.

And any time this point is brought up, the right are quick to shout some variation of 'see? it's the left trying to take away my rights and freedom!', or that they're somehow against personal choice. It's not 'rights vs responsibilities' with them, it's freedom vs oppression, and I find that inherently malicious. It's disingenuous and it's exactly why the first world (and yes, Canada/Australia/UK are all in on this too) is seeing such a resurgence of old, outdated nonsense lately.

The reality is that we need a balance...and the democrats/liberals are that balance. Y'all keep saying they're communist dictators and that socialism is bad, but the US 'left' is actually pretty much right down the center, and most other first world countries like northern Europe, UK, Canada, Australia, etc are all slightly left of center, and those countries also happen to be some of the best countries in the world. I hate this idea that socialism is bad or that democrats/liberals are bad. I hate this idea that republicans think they're the oppressed minority or the heroes of the story when in reality they're just the villains in everyone else's.

Don't get me wrong, there's a whole spectrum of good and evil here, but like...holy shit anyone who says gays aren't worthy or that black people don't deserve respect or that trans people aren't real or that science is the enemy are NOT on the right side of history. I do not understand why so many people seem to genuinely believe that conservatives are the good guy here.

If they can fix the system without delaying the help people need then I'm all for it. But I don't want to delay help for 80-90% of people because some people abuse the system. They can work on fixing it after we're through a massive worldwide pandemic.

Also, just so I don't have to quote you twice, you keep mentioning that you hope our children forgive us. According to the article there's been 30-60 billion stolen through these issues. The current debt is 23.3 trillion dollars. I think our children will forgive us adding 0.1% to the debt illegitimately while trying to get through a pandemic.  

Are we too stupid to be able to close up most of the gaps?  This doesn't have to be all or nothing. A lack of compromise is an issue from both the left and right in my opinion.  It is too bad really.

Thank you for "I hate this idea that republicans think they're the oppressed minority or the heroes of the story when in reality they're just the villains in everyone else's. " I love the generalization of nearly half the county as villains bravo. 

Have you generally not been paying attention the past 20 years or so? I'm not generalizing, I'm coming to a conclusion based on tonnes of data. 

Remember, 70 million people voted for Trump in this last election. That means at least 70 million people either found his blatant bigotry and shitty behaviour endearing, or at least it wasn't a dealbreaker. That is a huge, nationwide problem. This isn't something quaint like voting for Bush, it's Trump. His nonsense is so widespread, varied, and blatantly obvious that I genuinely wouldn't even know where to start. and people voted for him. Either because they liked the shitty, bigoted things he said, or cared so little about the people he was shitty to that his behaviour wasn't enough to get them to realize 'holy hell this isn't worth it'. 

To some people, it's worth it to vote for someone like Trump, and that's a MAJOR problem. they ARE the villains. 

You republicans may not be the bad guys, but you still voted for the bad guy, and that's enough. 

If you think .1% of the debt is all that is illegitimate I would disagree but I understand your sentiment.  I would also point out this was just from the CARES act and it only touches on unemployment fraud.  It doesn't cover any other fraud Here is a list of some of the stuff the DOJ knows about and is going after, but what don't they know about, how much of that will be recovered? How many of these mistakes are we getting ready to repeat because our politicians are rubbish at working together to intelligently help their constituents?

I'm just frustrated with many aspects of our government.  How so many people are dancing like good little D or R puppets for their "side" when the puppet masters (wealthy companies and individuals) are the ones pulling the strings and our representatives get rich in the process of ultimately maintaining the status quo.