Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the committee for bringing this bill, and I rise in strong support of H.R. 1156, the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act. There is an old expression that we have all heard at one time or another about the somewhat famous bank robber Willie Sutton. He was asked: Why do you rob banks? His answer was: Because that is where the money is. That is exactly what happened with expanded pandemic unemployment insurance during the pandemic. We all lived through it. We saw it. I had a front-row seat as a State law enforcement official at the time. We saw enormous and unprecedented amounts of money shoveled from this town out into State unemployment systems that were ill-equipped to handle it. Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? We didn't just know that. The fraudsters, the criminals, and the organized criminal enterprises knew it, too. They saw opportunity. They saw that is where the money was, chased it, and stole enormous amounts of money. In the case of my State of Kansas, a subsequent forensic audit suggests it was about $466 million in documentable stolen pandemic funds. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Mr. Speaker, I will tell you what we did about it as State officials at the time. We looked to our Federal partners. We worked closely. Everybody was dealing with a circumstance we hadn't seen before.…”