State Senator Neil Anderson has released the below statement following the release of a recent audit of the Illinois Department of Employment Security in which an estimated $5.24 billion was made in unemployment overpayments:
“This audit shows what we’ve feared all along, which is that Illinois taxpayers and businesses were being robbed by the Pritzker Administration’s incompetence. The disaster and dysfunction at IDES resulted in over $5 billion in wrongful payments—all while rightful beneficiaries waited months to receive owed unemployment benefits from Pritzker’s forced shutdowns. Now, it’s on the taxpayers to pay for the failures of their state government.
“This Administration continuously failed to act appropriately during the COVID era and failed to put the necessary and recommended safeguards in place to prevent the massive fraud that this audit has exposed. This is a complete gut punch to our state’s residents and proper steps must be taken to avoid a disaster like this in the future.”
Senator Anderson is a member of the state’s Legislative Audit Commission which oversees state audits.