A promise went out from Rep. James Comer (R-KY) stating that the House Oversight Committee would go after fraud, waste, and abuse throughout the new Congress.
While making an appearance this past Sunday on “Meet the Press” from NBC, Comber explained to the show’s host, Chuck Todd, that the Republican-dominated group would look into the multiple hundred of billions of dollars out of various COVID-related funds while smacking Democrats with accusations of misappropriation of the funds to emphasize left-wing social issues.
“We’re gonna investigate between 40 and 50 different things,” promised Comer. “We have the capacity, we’ll have 25 members on the committee, and we’re gonna have a staff close to 70… And let’s just face it, Chuck, over the past two years, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee haven’t investigated anything in this administration. They’ve investigated the Washington Commanders football team, we’ve had several hearings on social issues that the Oversight Committee has absolutely nothing to do with, issues like abortion.”
“We believe that there have been hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars wasted over the past three years–that spans two administrations– in the name of COVID,” Comer went on.
“We want to have hearings on that. We want to try to determine what happened with the fraudulent unemployment insurance funds, the fraudulent [Paycheck Protection Program] loan funds, some of this money that’s being spent for state and local governments in the COVID stimulus monies… these are things that are going to be priorities for us as a committee,” he tacked on.
This past March, the editorial board of Bloomberg explained that the U.S. Secret Service estimated that well over $100 billion in COVID relief funds had been given out because of corrupt deals, fraud, or issued to dead people. Another data set released by the Department of labor discovered that well over $87 billion was paid incorrectly for COVID-related unemployment benefits. The Small Business Administration handed over well over $6 billion to people is went on to accuse them of fraud. The IRS also reportedly dealt out roughly 2 million stimulus checks, to the tune of $3.5 billion, to dead people.
While speaking at an earlier point this week, Comer threw blame at high-profile Democrats for blemishing the strong integrity of congressional probes and put forth a promise to change once Republicans were back in power.
“I don’t believe congressional investigations have a whole lot of credibility right now,” stated Comer in an interview for Punchbowl News. “I blame Adam Schiff for that. But it’s also both parties to blame for investigations in the past. But I really want to change that.”
