The federal government's overarching watchdog, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), has released a nearly 350 page report that details and condemns the Trump regime's failed response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The GAO's report tells us many things we already know and it's especially critical of the Trump regime's failure to implement most of the office's recommendations for controlling the pandemic.
But their report also tells us some things we didn't know and this is seems timely given that Congress is currently moving toward the approval of another coronavirus aid package. The GAO report says that, in some cases, the Trump regime spent less than 20 percent of the funds appropriated by Congress nearly a year ago.
The report focused largely on the Department of Health and Human Services, which leads the government’s response. But the GAO’s comprehensive review included covid program integrity issues involving overpayments worth $1.1 billion in the Department of Labor’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and 3,000 Small Business Administration loans to potentially ineligible companies.
The supply chain of money also has knots. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act provided $300 million to the Commerce Department in March for assistance to the fishery industry, which has taken a financial hit because the pandemic closed restaurants. As of Dec. 4, only $53.9 million, about 18 percent, according to the GAO, “had been disbursed, which is inconsistent with Office of Management and Budget guidance on the importance of agencies distributing CARES Act funds in an expedient manner.”
Imaging owning a fishing business and facing bankruptcy knowing that the Trump regime was just sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars because they couldn't be arsed to do their jobs.
The GAO's report also states that the Trump regime only implemented 4 out of 31 recommendations the office made last year that could have prevented some of the problems outlined in their report.
The backdrop to all of these things -- from the failure to ever support a mask mandate to failing to distribute economic aid -- is a growing death toll that has now passed 450,000. Millions of people have exposed themselves to infection because they had no choice and they had no choice because the previous government refused to give them one. The Biden administration has reimplemented the rule you can claim unemployment benefits if returning to work is too great a risk to your family.