Ernst: The Case of the Double-Dealing Bureaucrats

Scooby-Doo, where are you?

We have a mystery to solve.

Why are government employee unions fighting so hard, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to block the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the information necessary to stop fraud and abuse?

The answer is obvious. The deep state doesn’t want those meddling whiz kids at DOGE exposing the Washington corruption that’s been hiding in plain sight for way too long.

Unscrupulous bureaucrats have been ripping off public assistance programs intended to help the needy, disabled, hungry, out-of-work folks, veterans, small businesses, and even children who lost a parent.

Like Scooby, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy, the DOGE team is on the case, and there is no shortage of leads.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who worked in the office responsible for identifying food stamp fraud, for example, was “selling confidential government information to the very criminals she was supposed to catch.” She enriched herself by abusing her “privileged access to confidential government databases” to enable the theft of $36 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds meant to help low-income families put food on the table.

Ruh roh!

Employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) accepted bribes—in the form of cash, not Scooby snacks—as part of a scheme to defraud the VA by purchasing orthopedic products at inflated prices that were not even medically necessary.

Others abused their access to confidential information to line their own pockets, sometimes by taking from the less fortunate and even the dearly departed.

Using the records of real people who recently died, several Social Security Administration (SSA) claims specialists—in separate incidents—made up fictitious children to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars of survivor benefits.

A SSA claims specialist robbed disabled beneficiaries by using her position to redirect their disability payments into her own PayPal account. Another SSA customer service representative diverted direct deposits from unsuspecting beneficiaries into accounts she controlled.

A Small Business Administration loan officer overrode the agency’s rejection of a fraudulent loan she submitted and then approved $550,000 worth of fake loans for herself and her family.

But no scheme is more blatant than the double dippers on the dole who are receiving two paychecks from taxpayers, one for being on the public payroll and another for being on unemployment rolls. So confident they won’t get caught, these fraudsters flagrantly filed jobless claims using their own names which are also on government paychecks, and got away with it, sometimes for years.

This isn’t just one or two bad apples, either. Thousands of government employees appear to have been ripping off the unemployment system by claiming to be out of work. This includes hundreds who were also receiving overtime pay.

A full-time Department of Labor employee received nearly $46,000 in jobless benefits while claiming every week for a year-and-a-half that he did not work or receive any income.

A USPS employee in Michigan collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unemployment assistance from multiple states over four years. His scheme was only brought to an end after a vigilant supervisor noticed he was receiving mail at multiple addresses where he did not live along his delivery route.

For six years, a federal employee who worked at the Veterans Health Administration and then the IRS collected more than $130,000 in jobless benefits by claiming he was unemployed.

A full-time SSA employee collected more than $30,000 in unemployment benefits over two years.

Hundreds of state bureaucrats are lining their pockets in the same way. In Georgia alone, more than 280 full-time state employees received a total of $6.7 million in unemployment benefits over two years. Some even filed unemployment claims from their government offices while on duty.

Zoinks!

Unlike a Scooby-Doo mystery, these wrongdoers aren’t even bothering to wear a disguise.

It’s time to root out the rip-off artists and put an end to the inside jobs by making it impossible to pocket a paycheck and unemployment benefits from the government at the same time. Since both lists are maintained by government, this should be a rather easy fix.

Despite all the protesting about DOGE, this isn’t the first crackdown on government grifters. As far back as 1977, the Carter administration launched Operation Match, which cross-checked the federal payroll with state welfare rolls, ultimately detecting more than 1,100 government employees who were fraudulently drawing public assistance. Nearly half a century later, bureaucratic embezzlement continues.

With fraud growing increasingly sophisticated, there is no excuse for allowing preventable crimes to continue in plain sight.

That is why I am giving my lastest Squeal Award to the bureaucrats double dipping on the dole who are enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers and those in need.

As chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus, I’m calling on the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General to investigate the magnitude of fraudulent unemployment benefits being paid to government employees.

If double dippers want to claim they’re unemployed, let’s make their wish come true.

And they would get away with it, too, if it wasn’t for our meddling.

Joni Ernst, a native of Red Oak and a combat veteran, represents Iowa in the United States Senate.

Click here for an official portrait of Senator Ernst.

###