Scathing New Report Identifies over a Dozen Major Mistakes by the Whitmer Administration, Hurting Families During Pandemic
LANSING, MI – Today, the Michigan Freedom Fund called on the Whitmer administration to retrieve the billions of dollars her unemployment agency allowed to be stolen from taxpayers, for both parties in the legislature to continue to hold Whitmer’s administration accountable for their reckless handling of taxpayer dollars and reiterated their call for Whitmer’s former appointed UIA director to return his hush money payment. This comes after the release of a scathing new report from the non-partisan Auditor General that identified billions in taxpayer dollars handed out in fraudulent payments by Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s scandal-ridden Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA).
Among the Auditor General’s findings:
The Governor’s agency intentionally reassigned its Investigations Division staff and removed fraud detection and prevention controls, significantly diminishing its ability to ensure “program integrity.”
Whitmer’s UIA made billions of dollars in fraudulent overpayments. Whitmer’s UIA knew it had paid at least $3.3 billion in overpayments to individuals who had not lost their jobs – and declined to take timely action to prevent further overpayments to such individuals.
Whitmer’s UIA could not support the appropriateness of $10.2 billion in PUA payments.
The agency did not consistently meet federal claims processing performance standards.
The agency did not respond or respond in a timely manner to Michiganders put out of work by Whitmer’s unconstitutional lockdown orders who reached out with questions and concerns. When it did communicate with them, it often provided out-of-work Michiganders with contradicting information.
“This new report from the nonpartisan Auditor General confirms that Governor Whitmer’s administration intentionally dismantled the unemployment fraud detection safeguards, which led to the theft of billions of taxpayer dollars through her broken unemployment agency. This report’s findings show that the legislature must continue to hold the Whitmer administration accountable for its gross incompetence in handling basic state government functions, and that Whitmer’s former appointed UIA director must return his hush money payment.”said Michigan Freedom Fund executive director Tori Sachs.
The Michigan Freedom Fund works to advance conservative ideas, hold our government accountable to taxpayers, and protect Freedom, opportunity, and workers’ Constitutional rights. For more information, please visit MichiganFreedomFund.com.
