Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

A lot of us can get pretty angry about news recently about Feeding Our Future and the 48 people charged (so far) in a massive fraud against the Federal government.

In the case of Feeding our Future, people said they were feeding more children than they were and pocketed the difference. It is alleged at this point that they made off with about $250,000,000. That’s a lot of money.

 But that hasn’t been the only case of people taking advantage of programs designed to minimize the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Every few days it seems that someone has been indicted for stealing money from the Payroll Protection Program (PPP). That was another pandemic program designed to protect small business by giving businesses money to pay for payrolls at a time when some of those businesses had to close during the pandemic and others saw their cash flow significantly reduced. It saved a lot of jobs and kept businesses and people afloat.

But some people made up businesses and payrolls and applied for, and received millions of dollars. I’m not quite sure how they did it, locally bankers did the paperwork for their business customers and I assume they were part of the checking system. So the crooks lied to bankers, too.

One thing that was learned during the recession of 2007-2009 was that government stimulus was not sufficient to quickly end the financial contraction. The economic recovery took longer than it needed to because the government didn’t pump enough money back into the economy.

 (It is important to remember that that recession was caused by people making home loans to people who couldn’t pay them back, another criminal activity.)

So when everything tanked in the spring of 2020 the Federal government rolled out a variety of programs, increased unemployment insurance, PPP, expanded food programs and more all designed to make people more secure financially and keep the economy working.

And it worked fairly well. There were arguments that maybe some of it was too generous but the net result was good.

Then along come the crooks and ne’er-do-wells who decided their share of the pie should be bigger so they cheated and stole from the programs.

 I think people who would take money designed to help people are among the lowest scum of the earth. They are not just enriching themselves, they are doing so at the expense of others.

They are also stealing from our children’s future and that of our grandchildren as well because most of that money (probably all of it actually) is being borrowed and they will be the ones who have to pay it back or suffer for not paying it back.

There is always talk about Federal budget deficits.  You can find viewpoints all over the spectrum from the concern that the money must be repaid with interest to those who think deficits don’t really matter.

Somewhere in between is where I fall. In good times when things are going well we should have balanced budgets and pay down debt. Borrow when you need to during recessions and pandemics to keep the economy stable.

It isn’t just pandemic programs. People bill Medicare and cheat. People don’t pay their fair share of taxes. People take advantage of disability programs. People cheat on government contracts.

And think of how much we spend to prevent cheating. Congress just approved $80 billion for the IRS over the next decade to upgrade its computers and have more staff for auditing.  And just about every department of government has people to check the work of others to catch cheats.

I’m not sure how many people missed the “Thou shall not steal” from the Ten Commandments but it sure seems like a lot!