{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-colleagues-urge-biden-admin-to-back-state-level-prevention-of-unemployment-insurance-fraud/", "Young, Colleagues Urge Biden Admin to Back State-Level Prevention of Unemployment Insurance Fraud", "2024-06-25", "2024", "2024-06", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Todd Young", "Y000064", "www.young.senate.gov", "toddyoung", "https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON \u2013 U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to Acting Secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor Julie Su and Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training Administration at the Department of Labor Jos\u00e9 Javier Rodr\u00edguez to sound the alarm on rising fraud for unemployment insurance (UI) and urge support for state-level prevention of UI fraud.\n\n\u201cWe write to advocate for state unemployment insurance (UI) agencies and to support their efforts to prevent fraud. The COVID-19 pandemic proved that the nation\u2019s UI system adapts quickly to support unemployed Americans during periods of exceptional hardship. Due to business closures and stay at home orders, the number of initial claims and continued claims rose quickly at the beginning of the pandemic,\u201d the senators wrote in the letter.\n\n\u201cAs the claims volume rose, the burden on states to detect fraud only increased. The number of fraudulent claims skyrocketed as states received more claims. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that between 11 and 15 percent of all pandemic-era UI benefits, or $100-$135 billion, were distributed fraudulently\u2026We look forward to working with you and encourage the Department to prevent fraudulent actors from stealing taxpayer dollars,\u201d they senators continued.\n\nSenators Young, Lankford, and Crapo previously sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Marty Walsh requesting an update on the Biden Administration\u2019s efforts to recover fraudulent benefits obtained through the temporary COVID-19 unemployment insurance programs. Senators Young and Crapo also introduced the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act to help recover funds lost to unemployment insurance (UI) fraud and provide incentives for states to recover fraudulent payments.\n\nView the full letter here or below.\n\nDear Acting Secretary Su and Assistant Secretary Rodriguez:\n\nWe write to advocate for state unemployment insurance (UI) agencies and to support their efforts to prevent fraud. The COVID-19 pandemic proved that the nation\u2019s UI system adapts quickly to support unemployed Americans during periods of exceptional hardship. Due to business closures and stay at home orders, the number of initial claims and continued claims rose quickly at the beginning of the pandemic. Nationwide, the number of initial claims rose from 251,875 during the week ending March 14, 2020, to 2.9 million during the week ending March 21, a 1,157 percent increase. By April 4, 2020, there were 6.1 million initial claims, and by April 25 there were 21.7 million continuing claims.\n\nAs the claims volume rose, the burden on states to detect fraud only increased. The number of fraudulent claims skyrocketed as states received more claims. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that between 11 and 15 percent of all pandemic-era UI benefits, or $100-$135 billion, were distributed fraudulently. Expenditures across the UI system totaled about $878 billion from April 2020 through September 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (\u201cthe Department\u201d).\n\nDuring the pandemic, the Department issued Unemployment Insurance Program Letter (UIPL) No. 16-21 to \u201chighlight the importance of identity verification\u201d and help states understand \u201crequired administrative procedures\u201d when the eligibility of a claimant \u201cis questionable.\u201d In the context of identity verification, the guidance permits states to pause benefits to a suspected fraudulent claimant for a week but requires states to resume paying benefits on claims on which payment has already been made (\u201ccontinued claims\u2019) after a week-long pause.\n\nIn 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled states must distribute benefits at \u201cthe earliest stage of unemployment as is administratively feasible\u201d citing the \u201cwhen due\u201d clause of Section 303(a)(1) of the Social Security Act. The Department has interpreted the Court\u2019s \u201cadministratively feasible\u201d requirement and the \u201cwhen due\u201d clause to mean payment must be made on a continued claim \u201cno later than the end of the week following the week in which the issue arises\u201d on a claim where payment has already been made.\n\nUnfortunately, states frequently discover after making payment that a claimant is likely a fraudulent actor. As such, the constrained timeline imposed by the Department creates administrative, structural, and financial challenges for states in periods where claim volume is high. Fraudulent actors frequently request appeals once their payments are paused because they know a state is obligated to resume payment well before an appeal can ever take place. The Department provides states with limited ability to stop paying benefits to clearly fraudulent actors absent a long appeals process that can, with enough fraudulent claims, be extremely costly to taxpayers. Currently, the Department only suggests states mitigate the potential risk of paying ineligible claimants by \u201cadvis[ing] claimants that they may want to defer cashing the unemployment check until their eligibility has been verified.\u201d Unsurprisingly, fraudsters did not wait to spend their money once it was received.\n\nThe high volume of claims and the growing sophistication of fraud rings makes the Department\u2019s interpretation in UIPL 16-21 and similar guidance of what is \u201cadministratively feasible\u201d outdated and burdensome on states. The Department has noted \u201c[p]roper application of Section 303(a)(1) requires an appropriate balancing of the dual concerns of promptness and accuracy\u201d in interpreting the \u201cwhen due\u201d clause. Accordingly, we request the Department modify UIPL 16-21 and other relevant guidance to achieve this \u201cappropriate balancing\u201d and offer states greater flexibility to prevent the payment of benefits to fraudulent actors. If fraud is reduced, states will have more bandwidth to invest in staff training, information technology systems, and best practices to promote the timely delivery of benefits.\n\nWe look forward to working with you and encourage the Department to prevent fraudulent actors from stealing taxpayer dollars.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:24:47Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-colleagues-urge-biden-admin-to-back-state-level-prevention-of-unemployment-insurance-fraud/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.371279988437891, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}