Senator Exposes Lax Biden Bureaucrats Let Fraudsters Steal $79 Billion Taxpayer Dollars
A Republican senator made a significant revelation when she informed reporters that leftist bureaucrats permitted COVID-19 “fraudsters” to exploit federal assistance, clarifying that the government’s vetting process was far from thorough, resulting in an estimated $79 billion in fraud.
For context, in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on June 6, 2025, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) stated that during the Biden Administration, con artists and scammers managed to deceive the federal government into disbursing billions in unwarranted financial aid amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The senator emphasized that due to the unchecked nature of this fraud, the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) became critically important.
In her conversation with Breitbart’s Sean Moran, Senator Ernst remarked that bureaucrats during the Biden era were “asleep at the wheel” when unscrupulous individuals began to exploit COVID-19 relief programs, asserting that the government “allowed COVID fraudsters to take taxpayers for a very costly ride, while small businesses were left out in the cold.”
Furthermore, Senator Ernst referenced a June 2025 report from the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) which disclosed that programs administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA), the Department of Labor (DOL), and other agencies had alarmingly inadequate vetting processes for their applicants, with “over 1.4 million potentially stolen or invalid SSNs” being utilized to seek aid. The report indicated that an estimated “$79.41 billion to $79.54 billion was distributed to applicants using these potentially stolen or invalid SSNs.”
