House Republicans will begin voting on a bill Wednesday to recover fraudulent COVID unemployment benefits—and the only thing preventing a lead cosponsor of that bill, Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), from taking that vote is that he spent the morning in New York in federal custody after being indicted on 13 charges, including fraudulently taking COVID unemployment benefits.
Santos' brazen lies have been on display ever since reporters exposed that he won a seat in Congress with an almost entirely fictional resume. But his hypocrisy has only come into focus with his bizarre decision to spend his short congressional tenure fighting to shrink the social safety net and make it harder to access benefits.
Among the 13 criminal charges now faced by Santos is the allegation that he applied for and received $24,000 in unemployment benefits in 2020 and 2021 while drawing a $120,000 salary at a Florida-based investment firm.
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The charge exemplifies the type of behavior that Republicans are aiming to punish with the Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act. Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the bill’s lead sponsor, said it would “recover stolen taxpayer money, help states ensure this scale of fraud never happens again, and help bring to justice those who committed these crimes.”
“House Republicans are now turning on the lights after raising the alarm about this greatest theft of tax dollars in American history,” he said.
On April 6, Santos became a leading cosponsor of the legislation, which is getting a vote Wednesday to set up final passage in the House later this week.
Ironically, that bill might make it harder for authorities to identify and prosecute potential aid fraudsters like Santos, by cutting federal funds approved by Democrats in 2021 to give the Department of Labor more resources to track down fraud.
For instance, the American Rescue Plan Act funded the creation of a federal database to cross-check aid claims in different states—which may have made it easier to discern that Santos, who was employed by a Florida company, drew relief funds in New York.
Republicans have said that their bill gives states the resources to go after pandemic aid fraud and extends the statute of limitations on fraud crimes from 5 to 10 years.
Santos’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Democrats were quick to call out Santos for his hypocrisy.
"Supporting Santos' expulsion from the House is a golden opportunity for Republicans to show they take unemployment insurance fraud seriously, as opposed to just playing politics with the issue," Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) told The Daily Beast. "But they've also developed a remarkable level of comfort with fraud and other crimes in recent years, so I'm not holding my breath."
Santos’ vocal support of the unemployment fraud bill isn’t his only political move now cast in a far different light by the facts of his indictment.
Last month, House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, intended as an opening bid in negotiations to avert a default on the federal debt in exchange for deep spending cuts and policy changes desired by the GOP.
In the process of crafting that legislation, Santos was perhaps the loudest voice in the GOP pushing to tighten work requirements for federal aid programs—notably Medicaid, which provides health care to the poorest Americans.
Initially, the bill proposed changing Medicaid rules to require beneficiaries to work at least 20 hours a week. Santos went further, filing an amendment to jack up that requirement to 30 hours a week, and suggesting that his vote was conditioned on his proposal being adopted.
Ultimately, Santos folded, but with just a four-seat cushion, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) couldn’t afford to lose his vote—and Santos seemingly wanted to remind McCarthy of that fact. The New York Republican decided to dramatically wait on the House floor and cast the final vote for the GOP debt limit bill, putting the legislation over the finish line.
To Democrats, the irony of Santos being criminally charged for doing the very things he—and his GOP colleagues—have crusaded against is almost too on the nose.
“The hypocrisy of George Santos advocating for work requirements on the kind of programs he personally defrauded exposes the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party, which has found common cause with Mr. Santos in assaulting the safety net,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) told The Daily Beast.
