Your Taxes Paid Thousands Of Government Staff Covid Unemployment While They Worked From Home

During the government-mandated lockdowns that left millions of Americans jobless, thousands of federal workers doubled their income from pandemic unemployment funds funded by taxpayers. While working mainly from home.

Despite staying on taxpayers’ payroll during the height of the pandemic panic, greedy bureaucrats in the Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, United States Postal Service, Amtrak?, and The Secret Service Taxpayers were conned out of millions of dollars more by Covid’s unemployment fund and wage assistance programs.

The Department of Homeland Security provided lost wage assistance for nearly 2,000 eligible employees. 2022 DHSIG report discovered.

Thank you Lax and rushed Standards, “claimants only needed to self-certify they met eligibility requirements when they filed for [pandemic unemployment assistance] benefits,” More than $8.8 Million Illegally, taxpayer funds were funneled towards 638 DHS employees. FEMA’s state workforce agencies also paid out $1.2 million in “lost wages assistance” To 935 DHS employees who were “fully employed.” During the approval period, at least 366 DHS officials who were not eligible were actually paid overtime You could receive up to hundreds of dollars per workweek in addition to your normal unemployment benefits.

Federal officials have committed an illegal grift “fraudsters” Attracted the attention of Republican Senator Joni Ernst and her January “make ‘em squeal” award, a monthly effort led by Ernst to expose government corruption and “make Washington more competent and less wasteful.”

“Thousands of active federal employees may have falsely claimed that they lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, in order to be paid twice by taxpayers: Once for being employed and then again for pretending to be unemployed,” Ernst explained in her squeal award announcement.

The Department of Justice has already charged several federal employees in other agencies with fraud, but the prolific behavior could earn more taxpayer-paid public staff the scrutiny of the top government watchdog, Inspector General Michael Horowitz, whom Ernst recently urged to “identify how many federal employees applied for and received pandemic unemployment and lost wages assistance for which they were not eligible.”

She also called on the chief IG to recover the funds and fire those “who abused the public trust.”

“It is appalling for anyone fortunate enough to have the reliability of a government paycheck to take advantage of financial assistance intended to provide a lifeline to Americans who lost their jobs or were unable to work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Ernst wrote.

Sen. Joni Ernst Letter To I… by The Federalist

Already, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an oversight committee within the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, determined that “tens of thousands” of federal employees applied for and received Small Business Administration loans even though their status as government-employed disqualified them from taking the handout.

Ernst, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, noted in her letter that the PRAC’The investigation into loans continues and could lead to even more deception

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