As President Joe Biden continues his attempt to sell Congress on a $1.9 trillion Wuhan coronavirus "relief" package, the precedent of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion "stimulus" package is being considered.
Back in 2009 when the legislation was being passed, then Vice President said the bill would no doubt lead to "wasted" taxpayer money. From Reuters (bolding is mine):
Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday that some waste is inevitable in the spending of a $787 billion economic stimulus package, in a characteristically blunt assessment.
“We know some of this money is going to be wasted,” Biden said during a roundtable discussion in New York with business leaders aimed at promoting the two-year stimulus plan.
The package was approved by the Democratic-led Congress in February over the objections of most Republicans, who were concerned about the potential for wasteful spending and because it will add billions of dollars to U.S. deficit spending.
President Barack Obama placed Biden in charge of supervising implementation of the stimulus to underscore his promise of strict oversight of the package, which is aimed at creating or saving 3 million to 4 million jobs.
Biden said transparency and accountability are key to the program’s success.
“There are going to be mistakes made,” said Biden. “Some people are being scammed already.”
And who could forget President Obama's admission about "shovel ready jobs" that were promised but never delivered.
Last year's initial Wuhan coronavirus relief package was full of wasteful spending and the issue wasn't corrected in follow up packages.
The first COVID-19 stimulus bill, the $2 trillion+ CARES Act, was corrupted by waste, fraud, and abuse. The federal government sent more than a million stimulus checks to dead people and many more to random European citizens. The expanded unemployment system it created lost more to fraud alone than the entire system paid out in 2019. And the Paycheck Protection Program was “swamped with potential fraud” as tens of thousands of ineligible companies received money and thousands more were overpaid.
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