contributed photo U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst accuses the Small Business Administration of being a “drive-thru” for fraudsters.

Joni Ernst apparently needs help reading a calendar.

Twice over the past week, the Iowa senator has complained about an incompetent, overreaching federal government.

Both times, she blamed the Biden administration.

Both times, she was wrong.

I suspect she knows that. In which case, Ernst doesn’t really need help with her calendar but her conscience.

For the moment, though, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume Ernst has a bad case of calendar confusion.

It’s clearly affecting her judgment.

Take her bogus claim on Wednesday that “Biden’s Small Business Administration” was responsible for “handing out more than $200 billion in suspected fraudulent pandemic recovery grants and loans to 4.5 million scammers.”

The $200 billion figure comes from the SBA Inspector General’s office, which said recently that this was the amount of “potentially fraudulent payments” made from the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program. The EIDL and PPP are programs created in March 2020 by Congress to help businesses when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

As a different pandemic-related oversight agency said earlier this year, SBA’s priority under President Trump was to move quickly and it “used few program controls to verify applicants’ eligibility prior to disbursing funds.”

That came at a cost. The SBA, in response to the Inspector General’s report, said that 86% of the fraud happened in the first 9 months.

If you can read a calendar, you’ll realize this was happening before Joe Biden became president. You may also recall that President Trump was hostile to certain oversight efforts early in the pandemic, promising, “I’ll be the oversight.”

It seems to me, if there was a time for Congress to squeal, it was back in 2020, when the money was going out the door. (Then, as now, Ernst was a member of the Senate Small Business Committee.)

When reports surfaced that members of Congress had gotten PPP loans, Ernst did say they should disclose it. But that’s hardly the robust oversight we have a right to expect from Congress.

It’s not like we didn’t know about these flaws back in 2020. There were several news reports about big corporations squeezing their way into programs meant for small businesses. And in July and October 2020, the SBA Inspector General’s office was already flashing warning signs.

In its October report, the IG said guardrails had been lowered so much it had “significantly increased the risk of program fraud.”

I know this was a busy time for Sen. Ernst, and oversight may not have been top of mind for her.

After all, she was facing re-election in November. She could clearly read that calendar.

It’s just other calendars she has a hard time with.

Take Wednesday of last week when she complained about Biden administration “regulations,” accusing the government of pushing Americans to turn up the thermostats on their air conditioners.

First, there is no such regulation. The government’s Energy Star program does recommend people turn up their thermostats when they’re not at home or asleep. But there is no requirement.

What Ernst also apparently missed is that the program was issuing this guidance in 2019, when the Trump administration was in charge.

Did anybody hear Joni Ernst squeal then?

At the time, news outlets reported that social media was in a tizzy over the idea of turning up the AC to 78 degrees, and a government spokesperson had to clarify – again, in 2019 – that nobody was recommending 78 as a setting, only that people set their thermostats 7 degrees higher when they weren’t at home and 4 degrees higher when sleeping.

Turning up the thermostat does seem like a good idea when the house is empty or at night, and I suspect a lot of Iowans are already doing this. It’s not only a sound energy conservation practice, but it can save on energy bills, too.

Sure, turning up the temp doesn’t have the same hardscrabble imagery as wearing bread bags over your shoes, but it’s still a frugal thing to do. That is, if you’re interested in saving money.

If, on the other hand, you’re in the habit of making it easy for crooks and fraudsters to rob the treasury of billions of dollars of taxpayer money while you look away, maybe frugality isn’t your concern. Especially if you can’t even read a calendar.

I hope Sen. Ernst can resolve this problem. It does seem serious.

If she needs money for a new calendar, I’d be glad to pitch in for one. I think all Iowans would.

However, if the problem isn’t Ernst’s calendar but her conscience, only she can fix that.

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Ed Tibbetts, of Davenport, has covered politics, government and trends for more than three decades in the Quad-Cities.