Free Republic

Nearly $100 billion at minimum has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday. The estimate is based on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration, said Roy Dotson, the agency’s national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, in an interview. The Secret Service didn’t include COVID-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.... ...Most of that figure comes from unemployment fraud. The Labor Department reported about $87 billion in unemployment benefits could have been paid...

Democrats are taking a beating because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) derailed a bipartisan Wuhan coronavirus relief plan. Members of both parties worked through the weekend to come to an agreement and, at the last minute, Pelosi decided it would be better for the House to introduce their own coronavirus relief plan. Her reasoning? There weren't enough progressive items in the bill and Democrats saw this as the perfect opportunity to fundamentally transform America into what they think it should be. Senators who were part of the negotiations and agreed to the bill before Pelosi blew it up decided to...

Allahpundit talked about Pelosi’s real motivations for shooting down the relief package and having Democrats come up with one of their own last night. If you hadn’t already come to the same conclusion yourself, it will seem immediately obvious when you read it. This is the old rule about never letting a perfectly good crisis go to waste. And when you know that virtually the entire mainstream media will provide cover for you, what have you got to lose?But at least the Speaker is attempting to be a little bit low key about it. Others have been blunter. The...