President Joe Biden has an offer: lend him $10, and he'll buy you a drink.
Starting with the 2020 passage of the CARES Act, Congress gave Biden and his predecessor authority to shovel trillions of dollars out the door for various types of pandemic-era stimulus payments. Unfortunately, it was far too much authority, especially by the time they got to the last installment — Biden's completely unnecessary 2021 American Rescue Plan, which squandered $1.9 trillion after the economy and the job market were already well on their way to recovery.
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Unfortunately, the government now estimates that $191 billion of the COVID-era payments were wasteful or fraudulent, the result of criminals exploiting outdated computer systems at state unemployment agencies.
The Washington Post, as usual, has weirdly found a way to make Biden the victim in all this. Congress, you see, will not allocate even more money so that he can do something about all that waste and fraud!
No, sorry. The last thing Congress should do is reward failure by giving Biden even more money to recover what was squandered. All I can think of is that famous photograph of Biden staring out the window during the Obama administration, thinking, "How many checks do I have to send that Nigerian barrister before he recovers the money I sent to the Nigerian prince?"
There are better ways of doing this than to throw good money after bad. What Congress should do instead is create some positive incentives.
State governments are still flush with unused COVID cash. Even a state as well-run as Florida still has, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis, as much as $200 million still lying around. That is more than enough money for Florida to track down some fraudulent COVID-era unemployment claims. Given that $191 billion is a lot of money, I'm guessing almost any state, were it to expend the resources, could recover enough to make a positive return on the investment.
Let all 50 state governments keep all or most of whatever they manage to recover from the criminals. They will pursue the money more or less zealously based on how badly things went in their own states. And at the federal level, perhaps Biden can redirect the FBI budget for persecuting pro-life protesters to catching the most egregious fraudsters who took advantage of the over-funding and poor management of the COVID era.