At a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Sec. Lori Chavez-DeRemer spoke about the work of DOGE at the Department of Labor.
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00:00Mr. President, accountability matters. That's what we're recognizing. With our partners at the Department of Labor for Government Efficiency, just a few weeks ago, we realized there's about $4.4 billion in COVID funds that were not used that the state coffers were just holding on to. Out of that, we've returned $1.4 billion back to the state treasury, so essentially to the American people, and we'll go back and claw the rest of those billions of dollars back.
00:27And on the heels of that, last night, late last night, we're understanding unemployment insurance fraud. That trust needs to be whole for the American people. When we need it, we need it for who deserves it. That's not what we're seeing.
00:41And the numbers that we saw last night, again, exposed by our partners at DOGE, at the Department of Labor, since 2020, over $400 million of payments have gone out already.
00:52And when you hear these numbers, apparently in the United States, we have over almost 25,000 people who are over 115 years old, who are collecting $59 million that we have sent out to people.
01:06Talk about fraudulent behavior, Mr. President, 28,000 people, between one and five years old, have collected fraudulent payments at the tune of $254 million has gone out.
01:22And lastly, 10,000 people who have not been born yet, 15 years into the future, $69 million, and they haven't even been born yet.
01:31In one case, they will be born 129 years from now. The United States government sent them $41,000, and they're not born yet.
01:40So, under the Department of Labor, those are the things that we're uncovering.
01:44I couldn't be more honored to tell the American people that we're bringing back their dollars, and we're saving them and returning them to the United States Treasury.
01:50Also, jobs numbers. Last Friday, 228,000 new jobs were reported. That is good for the American people.
01:59That is my primary job, is to grow that workforce under your leadership.
02:03So, we've kicked off the America at Work tour, and we'll be visiting all 50 states, and I'll be working with my colleagues here to do just that.
02:11So, thank you, Mr. President. We're going to grow this economy. We're going to keep our focus on the American worker.
02:17Say you're finding tremendous fraud, though. Those numbers are really bad when you're over 115 years old.
02:24And I think you had mentioned the oldest person in our country is 114 years old.
02:30That's pretty good.
02:31A woman living in Pennsylvania, but apparently there's 24,000 more of them that are 115 or older.
02:37I hope you hear that. So, we have 24,000 older than the oldest person.
02:42Definitely dead.
02:43And what are we doing about that? How do we get that money back?
02:49Yeah, so we're working with our IGs to do the further investigation.
02:53The House and Senate, we had a five-year statute of limitations.
02:58We've had an extension on that another five years.
03:00And so, the goal, in my opinion, we should never have a statute of limitations to return the American dollars back to the Treasury when there's fraud.
03:06But at this point, we will continue to work hard and double down and return those dollars to the Treasury.
03:11Great. Thank you.
03:13Great job.