N.J. labor commissioner testifies at House hearing on unemployment insurance fraud

A hearing of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight today featured a notable New Jersey witness: Rob Asaro-Angelo, the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development under Gov. Phil Murphy.

Asaro-Angelo – who was invited by the committee’s Democratic ranking member, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) – testified on the work that his department has done to combat fraud within the unemployment system, which was the focus of today’s hearing. The commissioner said that the massive increase in unemployment claims during the Covd pandemic, and the influx of new federal laws that came with them, made combating fraud significantly more difficult.

“With the dramatic increase in claimants, and the dramatic increase in benefits, there was a dramatic increase in fraudulent claims,” Asaro-Angelo said. “Fraudsters saw the pandemic as the perfect time to attack, and they saw an almost-perfect target: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.”

Asaro-Angelo added that while individual states like New Jersey can develop anti-fraud systems, security improvements on a national level would go a long way towards catching and deterring fraud.

“There’s no silver bullet to completely eradicate fraud from our benefit system, but we can combat it in every way possible, continually learning and training so we stay one step ahead,” he said.

During the pandemic, much of the focus in New Jersey was on the Labor Department’s struggles to work through its backlog of unemployment claims and deal with complex new federal laws regarding unemployment payments. At a State Senate Labor Committee hearing in March 2022, Asaro-Angelo was grilled for hours by senators who said their constituents had been trying in vain to get the unemployment payments they needed.

The flipside to making sure the right people do get benefits, though, is making sure the wrong people don’t get them. Pascrell noted that those who take benefits fraudulently are doing so to the detriment of those who deserve them, and praised Asaro-Angelo for his department’s handling of the crisis.

“I am happy to work together to ensure federal dollars are well spent,” the congressman said in his opening remarks. “Fraudsters must be held accountable. Our witness from New Jersey deeply understands this unemployment insurance fraud and has ideas on how we can prevent it in the future.”

The committee hearing comes in the midst of a chaotic few weeks in Washington. Yesterday, the House once again failed to elect a speaker, meaning that the House has not had a proper leader for more than two weeks; members are now having serious discussions about empowering Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-North Carolina) on a temporary basis.

Still, amid the havoc, committees and subcommittees are continuing to proceed with hearings like the one today. Some committees are even marking up bills – but those bills won’t be able to go anywhere until the House finds a way out of its speakership dilemma.