One Reason We Can't Afford the Ships We Need for the U.S. Navy - "The Great Grift" of the COVID-19 Panic

Do you feel like your pocket has been picked? You should. In the rush to get money out for COVID-19 relief, we rang up the US debt levels and, maybe, $280 billon of that money ended up in payments based on fraud, The Great Grift: How billions in COVID-19 relief aid was stolen or wasted

An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10% of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.

That number is certain to grow as investigators dig deeper into thousands of potential schemes.

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“I think the bottom line is regardless of what the number is, it emanates overwhelmingly from three programs that were designed and originated in 2020 with too many large holes that opened the door to criminal fraud,” Gene Sperling, the White House American Rescue Plan coordinator, said in an interview.

“We came into office when the largest amounts of fraud were already out of the barn,” Sperling added.

Plenty of blame to go around here, even if most of it happened before the current administration came in, some of it happened afterwards. In any event, the taxpayers are on the hook for the loans required to fund this debacle.

Even half of $280 billion would fund a lot of ships and infrastructure improvement for the Navy and the other services.