When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo) asked if any of the three expert witnesses testifying before Congress on Feb. 1 could name a single government director or supervisor who has been fired or demoted as a result of the estimated $500 billion lost to waste, fraud, and abuse in pandemic relief spending, none of them could do so.
Boebert was followed by freshman Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) who told the witnesses he was “shocked to learn when preparing for this hearing that many of the COVID benefits, or at least some of them, were available on a self-certifying basis.” Goldman, who prosecuted multiple cases of mortgage fraud during and following the 2008 economic crisis, called the government allowing benefit applicants to self-certify their eligibility “a recipe for fraud.”
These weren’t just any witnesses being questioned by Boebert, Goldman, and the other 47 members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (HCOA) about the hundreds of billions of tax dollars already known to have been stolen by bad actors in government, the private sector, and even overseas. Committee members and witnesses agreed there is likely vastly more in losses that have yet to be discovered.
The trio of experts included Michael Horowitz, Chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) and Inspector General (IG) for the Department of Justice, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who oversees the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of…
