It's all about making numbers look good rather than doing the right thing. The usual result of basing decisions on metrics that don't match up with reality.
Can you connect the dots, how is this making the numbers look good? The shortfall would either be paid by the state, businesses, or the federal government. In every case, those are just citizens paying that money, one way or another.
Out of the options, it doesn’t seem right to make the federal pay it - that would make non Californians pay their debt.
So it’s either business owners or comes out of the taxes of ordinary citizens. I’m agnostic as to whom pays, but considering the businesses received those funds, that doesn’t seem less reasonable than making the citizens pay.
There was a lot of fraud done by businesses with these loans, so maybe they already profited and this is a clawback? But an unfair one to non-fraudulent businesses…
LexisNexis data analysis performed by the reporters at KCRA showed that California paid out at least $32.6 billion and counting in fraudulent disability and unemployment compensation during the pandemic.
