Chico Times

(Washington, D.C.) – Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R – Richvale) voted in favor of H.R. 1163, the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act. The bill incentivizes states to aggressively prosecute unemployment fraud by extending the statute of limitations and allowing them to retain a percentage of the recovered money.

There is an estimated $400 billion in COVID-19 unemployment fraud, which is slightly less than half of the total amount of COVID unemployment insurance paid out by the states. California's share of COVID unemployment insurance fraud is estimated to be $32.6 billion. The costs of this fraud is currently being borne by business owners who have to pay higher taxes to replenish the lost money. States currently do not have much incentive to prosecute unemployment insurance fraud or try to recoup fraudulent payments because they do not get to keep any of the recovered money. H.R. 1163 allows states to keep 25% of recovered fraudulent COVID funds and 5% of regular unemployment funds. The idea is to remove the liability from taxpayers and business owners - who did nothing wrong- and place the responsibility for fixing their own mistakes on the state governments who mishandled the unemployment money in the first place.

"Business owners should not be on the hook for money that states allowed to be fraudulently paid out to people who did not deserve it,"said Rep. LaMalfa.  "Billions of dollars in COVID money was lost to fraud, including to Russian, Chinese and Nigerian foreign scammers and even prisoners in prison for life. I support this legislation that will incentivize states to start taking this problem seriously and prosecute this fraud. Business owners have enough trouble trying to make ends meet and meet payroll without being financially penalized for the incompetence of bureaucrats."

Congressman Doug LaMalfa is a lifelong farmer representing California’s First Congressional District, including Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama and Yuba Counties.

Original source can be found here