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The faces of Barbie’s Dream World played a role in the fiscal nightmare that
was COVID-19 spending. Government spending was already out of control
when Congress approved $800 billion in COVID Paycheck Protection
Program (PPP) funds. As federal agencies hustled to get the funds out
quickly, it came as no surprise when swindlers rushed to line up for their cut
of the COVID cash.
Some of us saw the writing on the wall and predicted that shutting down our
economy and printing more money to pay the nation to stay home from work
would be a fiscal disaster. But using Barbie’s face as proof of identity to
steal taxpayer dollars was not on my COVID waste bingo card.

What was supposed to be an AI system to verify proof of identity, quickly
exposed the stupidity of the program. The verification system did not catch
the images of dolls uploaded by fraudsters. Somehow the Small Business
Administration carelessly approved the applicants from Toyland and sent
out improper COVID-19 PPP payments.