Unlike Republicans, Senate Democrats are moving to help people with pandemic fraud crackdowns

On Tuesday, as Democratic senators introduced the Fraud Protection and Recovery Act to address identity fraud and address historic and systemic fraud during the pandemic, Senator Wyden highlighted a contrast between how Democrats and Republicans address fraud, saying, “Too often, in too many cases, it has not been good government, because Republicans have used fraud as an excuse to cut key programs that support middle-class workers.”

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced new legislation Tuesday called the Fraud Prevention and Recovery Act to address systemic pandemic fraud and help victims of identity theft. Of course, since this is a democratic proposal, the solution is not to cut off resources from the most vulnerable and give them to even bigger crooks who happen to have a lot of money.

“Understand that there is 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,” the Senate Finance Committee chairman said Ron Wyden (D-ORE) on a call with reporters featuring PoliticusUSA.

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

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The Democratic senator stressed that cracking down on fraud should be a matter of good government: “But too often, in too many cases, it’s not about good government, because Republicans use fraud as an excuse to cut key programs that support workers of the middle class. So we Democrats take a backseat to anyone when it comes to cracking down on fraud. We stand arm in arm with the administration in these efforts.”

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

Bullet points on how this would work:

I. Prosecute and recover: Ensure supervisory and enforcement bodies have the resources to prosecute major pandemic frauds and recover taxpayer dollars

– Provides $300 million to triple COVID-19 Fraud Strike Force teams
-Increases the maximum limit of the Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act to $1 million
-Provides $250 million to the Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) of the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Department of Labor (DOL)
-Continued access by the Department of Labor’s (DOL) OIG to expanded unemployment insurance (UI) data sets that can be used to detect cases of multistate and coordinated fraud
-Wyden-Crapo proposal to increase the statute of limitations for UI pandemic fraud to 10 years

II. Prevent and safeguard: Invest in preventing fraud and identity theft in the future
-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)
-Forthcoming 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 improve IdentityTheft.gov and create a unique 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 sleazy private data brokers who aren’t protecting Americans’ privacy, they’re stealing from people.”

The way Wyden explained the democratic approach to cracking down on fraud is critical to understand, especially when discussing politics with people who aren’t paying close attention. Democrats do not use “fraud” as an excuse to cut important programs that help vulnerable people in an expression of this country’s democratic values. That doesn’t mean they are condoning the fraud or not trying to address it. Perhaps it’s best summed up by saying that Democrats don’t politicize fraud to justify cuts that voters don’t support.

It goes without saying that no legislation is perfect, and certainly no political party comes even close to perfect. 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 rich and big businesses?

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

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