These Democratic anti-fraud dollars helped the Department of Labor create an important cross-checking system to catch fraudsters who apply for unemployment in one state while receiving income in another, a practice for which a Republican House Member reportedly was indicted earlier this week.

Republicans are playing a dangerous game by cutting off ongoing, successful work by the federal government to fight fraud and leaving states to pick up the pieces. The Department of Labor expressed deep concerns about how H.R. 1163 will “…throttle essential, ongoing efforts to strengthen and protect the UI program from fraud”.  Instead of punishing organized crime, the Republican HR 1163 guts federal funding to fight fraud, weakens state unemployment systems, privatizes American public service jobs, and sends cruel surprise bills to innocent workers who were unemployed during the pandemic.

We bipartisanly enacted pandemic unemployment benefits that kept an estimated five million people a year from falling into poverty. This assistance meant revenue and customers for businesses and helped spur our economic recovery.  Unfortunately, when disaster struck, state unemployment systems were not prepared. Mistakes were made and thousands of workers overpaid.  Again, we worked bipartisanly to encourage states to waive overpayments to protect unemployed workers.  Now, Republicans want to force states to clawback accidental overpayments up to 10 years later.  When my GOP colleagues incorrectly assert that the bill limits the clawback of overpayments to fraud, they are ONLY referring to the very narrow limit on the ability of states to keep portions of recovered fraud payments.

My Democratic colleagues and I offered many amendments to invest in anti-fraud efforts, protect workers, and strengthen state unemployment systems.  The Republicans rejected every amendment.  Instead, the GOP careens ahead with H.R. 1163 that CBO estimates is a net cut in federal investment in fighting unemployment fraud and strengthening unemployment systems.  This is why so many organizations oppose H.R. 1163, including: the AFL-CIO; the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Communications Workers of America; the National Employment Law Project; and SEIU.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous bill.

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