Fraud Friday – The Success of Pandemic Relief Outweighs the Fraud

June 16, 2023

Delaney Sexton
Contributing Editor

Fraud Friday – The Success of Pandemic Relief Outweighs the Fraud

“To state the obvious, it is bad to defraud the government, and it is good that the money is being recovered. But this is simply less notable than the millions of people whose lives were saved and improved by these programs,” reads an article published in The American Prospect. “Compare the amount of money that reached the people who needed it to the amount lost to fraud, and the pandemic programs look like a truly phenomenal accomplishment.”

Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, we have grown accustomed to hearing grandiose stories of fraud with millions of taxpayer dollars being used for extravagant vacations, pricy homes, luxury cars, or even Pokémon cards. There has been a constant flow of reports and publications declaring the massive extent of pandemic fraud, but less attention has been paid to the overall massive success the programs had in bearing the weight of economic uncertainty.

As Max Moran, research director of the Revolving Door Project (a left-of-center organization from the Center for Economic and Policy Research), writes, “The fraud numbers are higher than ever because the total amount disbursed through these programs was higher than ever.” The article contends that the amount of fraud in relief programs is no more disproportionate than the fraud in some government programs that existed long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recognizing the shortcomings of the relief programs and the fraud that took place in them is crucial to preventing the same mistakes from occurring again in the future, but that recognition should not discredit the people and work it took to execute the relief programs with as much diligence as possible in such a short amount of time.

Source:
Pandemic Fraud Is Really, Truly Not a Big Deal – The American Prospect