Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Newsmax on Tuesday the recently reported $5.4 billion in COVID relief fraud has become indicative of the "real problems" facing the federal government, regarding wasteful spending.
"This is a mistake that often happens," Paul said during an appearance on "Spicer & Co."
"Government just opens these programs and everybody says, 'Oh, we've got a big heart, we need to help people,' until you find out people were buying Lamborghinis and Bentleys and Porsche sports cars, yachts, boats. And now, what we've discovered is about 70,000 people actually got a significant amount of money — $5 billion — by putting the wrong Social Security number."
Paul added: "You would think that would be pretty easy to check but government's not very good at oversight, and it's why government ought to be out of the business of printing up and handing out money to everyone."
In a report released Monday, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a federal watchdog group, said it "identified 69,323 questionable Social Security numbers used to obtain $5.4 billion from the Small Business Administration's COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and Paycheck Protection Program."
When asked about the recent comments from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., involving cutting government waste and not simply raising the debt ceiling, Paul said, "I think we should draw the line with dead people."
"I think, for example, dead people shouldn't be allowed to receive money — that should be the lowest of the low bars is dead people," Rand continued. "A thousand dead people got pandemic checks for a billion dollars, and when I tried to have legislation to stop this from happening, a Democrat hysterically ran to the floor objecting because he was worried about the privacy rights of dead people. So, I mean, we have real problems."
The Kentucky Republican said he produces a report on government waste each year at Christmas time, and this year "pointed out $482 billion worth of waste."
"I'll give you one or two examples ... $2.4 million to inject beagles with cocaine to study what are the adverse effects of cocaine," said Paul. "Well, you think we might just go out on the streets of San Francisco and look at all the addicts on cocaine and say, 'You know what? We could study the humans that are in this miserable position without injecting it into dogs.'"
"Here's one of the worst," Paul continued. "Marvel Comics has somebody named Thanos. He's an evil overlord, and he has metal fingers and when he snaps, lightning comes out of his fingers.
"Well, someone in the government thought it would be a great idea to spend $118,000 to get some guy some metal gloves and have him try to snap and see if you can snap his fingers with metal gloves, and it turns out you can't — it's make believe," added Paul.
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