Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the committee for bringing this bill, and I rise in strong support of H.R. 1156, the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act.

There is an old expression that we have all heard at one time or another about the somewhat famous bank robber Willie Sutton. He was asked: Why do you rob banks? His answer was: Because that is where the money is.

That is exactly what happened with expanded pandemic unemployment insurance during the pandemic. We all lived through it. We saw it. I had a front-row seat as a State law enforcement official at the time. We saw enormous and unprecedented amounts of money shoveled from this town out into State unemployment systems that were ill-equipped to handle it.

Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? We didn't just know that. The fraudsters, the criminals, and the organized criminal enterprises knew it, too. They saw opportunity. They saw that is where the money was, chased it, and stole enormous amounts of money. In the case of my State of Kansas, a subsequent forensic audit suggests it was about $466 million in documentable stolen pandemic funds.

The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you what we did about it as State officials at the time. We looked to our Federal partners. We worked closely. Everybody was dealing with a circumstance we hadn't seen before. We were assured that our Federal partners had the tools, capacity, and reach to exceed our borders and reach out and touch these transnational criminal organizations operating from overseas that stole money from our taxpayers right here at home. We deferred. We relied on the assurances that the Federal Government was going to step up and enforce the law to its full extent.

Now, here we are, 5 years later, not just by happenstance but because of decisions made in this body by people who came before us. The sun is about to set on the ability of the Federal Government to do what it promised to do because there is a statutorily enacted statute of limitations that shuts the door on further prosecutions in only a few short days.

It is within our power to change that decision and to let the Federal Government follow through on its promise to bring to bear whatever tools we have to try to recover whatever portion of that remaining stolen money is able to be recovered.

Why on Earth would we not do that? It is the right thing to do for our taxpayers, and it is the right thing to do

for the rule of law. It is just the right thing to do.

We should abandon the ``see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil'' approach that is the status quo. We should adopt this bill, extend the statute of limitations, and let our dedicated Federal law enforcement authorities do their jobs to keep chasing this money and bring back whatever they can find.

Mr. Speaker, I support the bill, and I am grateful for the leadership.