Unlike Republicans, Senate Democrats Move To Help People With Pandemic Fraud Crackdown

On Tuesday, as Democratic Senators introduced the Fraud Protection and Recovery Act to address identity fraud as well as addressing the historic, systemic fraud during the pandemic, Senator Wyden drew a contrast between the way Democrats and Republicans address fraud, saying, “Too often, in too many instances, it hasn’t been about good government, for Republicans to hold up fraud as an excuse to slash key programs support workers in the middle class.”

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced new legislation on Tuesday called The Fraud Prevention and Recovery Act to deal with systemic pandemic fraud and help victims of identity theft. Of course, because this is a Democratic proposal, the solution is not to cut resources to the vulnerable and give them to even bigger cheats who just happen to have a lot of money.

“Understand there’s a big contrast here between what Senate Democrats are talking about with the Biden administration and what most Republicans want to do when they talk about fraud,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-ORE) said in a call with reporters in which PoliticusUSA took part.

Wyden took on the established notion that Democrats don’t care about fraud, “Democrats want to crack down on fraud, save taxpayer money and improve vital programs out of a commitment to better and more efficient government. We want these federal programs to work better give more Americans a chance to get ahead.”

The Democratic Senator made the point that cracking down on fraud is supposed to be about good government, “But too often, in too many instances, it hasn’t been about good government, for Republicans to hold up fraud as an excuse to slash key programs support workers in the middle class. So we Democrats don’t take a backseat to anybody when it comes to cracking down on fraud. We are arm in arm with the administration on these efforts.”

The WH Pandemic Fraud Fact Sheet points out, “While millions of Americans scraped by, bad actors exploited this national emergency, siphoning taxpayer-funded resources from small businesses and struggling families when they needed them most. This systemic fraud particularly impacted the small business programs and the new and expanded unemployment benefits that originated in early 2020.”

Bullet points of how this would work:

I. Prosecute & Recover: Ensuring That Oversight and Enforcement Bodies Have the Resources to Prosecute Major Pandemic Fraud & Recoup Taxpayer Dollars

– Provides $300 million to triple the COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force teams
-Increases the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act cap to $1 million
-Provides $250 million to the Small Business Administration (SBA) and Department of Labor (DOL) Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs)
-Continues the Department of Labor (DOL) OIG’s access to expanded unemployment insurance (UI) datasets that can be used to detect instances of multi-state and coordinated fraud
-Wyden-Crapo proposal to raise statute of limitations for pandemic UI fraud to 10 years

II. Prevent & Safeguard: Investing in Fraud and Identity Theft Prevention Going Forward
-Provides $25 million and new authorities to expand Treasury’s Do Not Pay Service.
-Provides $75 million for privacy-preserving validation of key identity attributes
-Peters-Romney Extension of a Cutting-Edge Anti-Fraud Analytics Platform – the Pandemic Analytics Center for Excellence (PACE)
-Upcoming Death Master File Legislation
-Provides $275 million to prevent identity theft in public benefits
-Provides $25 million to pilot an identity theft early warning system
-Provides $200 million to enhance IdentityTheft.gov and create a one-stop remediation experience for victims
-Provides $175 million in grants for additional services for victims of identity theft

Wyden also noted that the identity protection aspects are “another step to reduce reliance on the sleazy private data brokers that don’t protect Americans privacy, they’re ripping people off.”

The way Wyden explained how Democrats approach cracking down on fraud is vital to understand, especially when discussing politics with people who don’t pay a lot of attention. Democrats are not using “fraud” as an excuse to cut important programs that help vulnerable people in what is an expression of this country’s democratic values. That doesn’t mean they’re excusing fraud or not trying to address it. Perhaps it’s best summed up as Democrats are not politicizing fraud to justify making cuts that voters don’t support.

It should go without saying that no legislation is perfect, and certainly no political party is even approaching perfection. People in politics tend to be power hungry and Machiavellian. But always pay attention to what they DO with their power. Are they helping the people or are they helping the wealthy and big business?

This legislation is another effort to help the people and small businesses.

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