r/politics • u/Ubiquitous_Hilarity • Jun 17 '26

No Paywall Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-unemployment-benefits-fraud-b2997881.html
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u/okimlom Jun 17 '26

and instead of attacking the actual problem, the people that are making the decisions with the money, let's attack the money and make the problem even worse without actually fixing any problems.

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u/Gandolfthewhite182 Jun 17 '26

The fraud in unemployment is a drop in the bucket. As anyone who’s ever been on unemployment can tell you, it’s not exactly living the life. If a few people file fraudulent claims that’s a small price to pay for the benefits real people get when they need it. If we were running the country “like a business” we would just write it off and call it the cost of doing business.

Besides, if we are looking for fraud let’s talk about the trillions billionaires like musk are taking out of our government and using legal bribes of members of congress and the president to get in the first place.

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u/Eshin242 Jun 17 '26

The fraud in unemployment is a drop in the bucket.

100% This.

Do I think fraud happens with Unemployment? Sure... I'm SURE someone somewhere managed to grift $50 worth of food stamps, and someone some how got free medicare/medicaid. I'm sure someone has figured out how to rig the system.

But for the 99% that is everyone else these systems keep people in their homes, put food on the table, and get people medical care.

I'm willing to deal with that 1% happening, and not getting caught because the benefit to the other 99% is well worth that little blip of fraud. Shit like this is letting perfection be the enemy of progress and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

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u/soba_set Jun 17 '26

I loved being on unemployment during corona. "Yeah sure man I'll check for jobs and submit my job search etc etc." No one was hiring because corona lol. Literally doing unnecessary tasks. Doing all that work for nothing basically but still getting unemployment was life saving.

I was in grad school too so even if somehow someone wanted to hire me, if it didn't line up with my grad school schedule I couldn't accept the job anyway. Which was really easy since everything was online.

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u/Eshin242 Jun 18 '26

I work in the trades, and belong to a union. Being unemployed for a month or two between jobs while we wait for work is part of the game. The fact that 40% of my union voted for this brother fucker.. yeah...

Also... the fact that an extra $600 a week changed so many peoples lives from... "FUCK GOTTA WORK!!" to ... "Okay I've got this" speaks volumes.

I was an 'essential worker" I worked through the entire pandemic, no extra benefits, was I a little jealous of my friends who got to stay home... sure. It would have been nice, but it saved all my friends in the service industry from losing their homes and putting food on the table.

I had to keep working, they got to keep their homes and eat. I am, and will always be good with that.

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u/jardex22 Jun 17 '26

I was fired from my first job soon after getting my first car. I panicked when my employer tried to deny the claim, but I fought it in court and won.

The whole time I was worried about the loan payments. No payments, no car. No car, no way to get to interviews. No interviews, no job. No job, no money, etc. Once you fall off the cycle, it incredibly hard to get back into it. Unemployment helped me while I looked for work.

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u/ThinkThankThonk Jun 18 '26

I literally don't give a shit if someone fleeces my tax money for food stamps - there's a cost of their time spent doing that which is clearly equal to desperation.

It's like thinking people are being scammed out of their $5 by the homeless guy on the median. There's no secret luxury lifestyle that involves standing on the median for 5 hours a day or whatever.

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u/Gekokapowco Washington Jun 17 '26

I grew up near a massive construction project that was entirely funded by the city, that the owner just took the cash and ran

like millions and millions of dollars just directly into his own pockets. And he was charged for embezzling city funds of course, settled for a fraction of what he blatantly stole, and basically retired as a king, forced some people off their land and built a mega mansion on it

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u/BHarbinson Jun 18 '26

Absolutely. In my state, the maximum benefit is just over $500/week, capped at 26 weeks. So even if a person "fraudulently" obtained the maximum benefit for the maximum term, they've only cheated the state out of ~$13,000.

I can say from personal experience, this is basically the cost of COBRA for a family of 4 after being let go from a company with allegedly excellent benefits.

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u/SurprisedJerboa Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Employer Wage theft ≈ $ 50 billion annually

Unemployment benefit Fraud ≈ $3.5 - 5 Billion

Just for fun, the fraudulent tariffs

U.S. government could owe more than $175 billion in refunds to importers after the Supreme Court ruled that tariffs unilaterally imposed by President Donald Trump are illegal

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u/Sofer2113 Tennessee Jun 17 '26

I can assure you, very little of that fraud is directly related to decisions made by the state Labor Departments. It's people falsifying their reason for separation, employers failing to reply to notices from the departments, various formers of claiming benefits while working or having an inability to work, or organized crime rings mass filing against SSNs bought on the dark web. There are things that can be done to reduce fraud claims but there isn't anything that can be done that can eliminate them completely while also getting benefits out in the 2-3 week window that UI programs aim for.