In November 2010, Vice President Joe Biden said fraud and abuse of the stimulus bill had been kept “to a surprisingly low level.” This came a year after Barack Obama bestowed VP Joe Biden with the title of the stimulus “sheriff.”
Barack Obama signs the failed stimulus into law in 2009.
Fast forward five years – Investigators have proven 1,268 cases of fraud in the $840 billion stimulus program.
USA Today reported:
Despite thousands of fraud cases, the financial losses under the 2009 Recovery Act have been just a fraction of what the government expected.
Five years after President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, investigators have proven 1,268 cases of fraud in the $840 billion stimulus program, resulting in $57 million in recovered funds.
Still, the amount of fraud discovered so far is far less than what investigators said they expected when Congress passed the stimulus package.
“We have not seen the level of fraud that I think many people feared,” said Kathleen Tighe, the chairwoman of the board. The board, created by the Recovery Act, is charged with monitoring all the money spent in the stimulus and disaster relief funds from Superstorm Sandy. She credited unprecedented transparency, aggressive prosecutions and an emphasis on fraud prevention.
Vice President Joe Biden will visit the St. Louis region this week on the fifth anniversary of the failed Obama Stimulus program. Don’t expect him to talk about all of the fraud in the failed Keynesian experiment.