Stopping Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Government Spending

STOPPING WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE IN GOVERNMENT SPENDING -- (House of Representatives - February 17, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Davis of Kentucky). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I rise with my colleagues today to highlight the important role this Congress must play in rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government spending. The Federal Government currently spends over $69,000 every second of every day. That astonishing figure is simply too high. This Congress must become a better steward of the taxpayers' dollars and we must do it now.

Our constituents deserve to send less of their hard-earned dollars to Washington and have more of their money to spend on their families, businesses and dreams. They meticulously budget their dollars at their kitchen tables and we owe it to them to do the same here in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, in order to do this, we must crack down on waste, fraud and abuse in government spending. We are going to have others of our party speak.

And now I would like to yield the floor to my esteemed colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway).

One of the wonderful things about having these programs and allowing different people to speak is that we get lots of different perspectives, and I think the Representative from Texas has brought us the perspective of a CPA, and I think that is an excellent perspective. We need more people with the kind of background that he has.

I want to say that I think we are extraordinarily fortunate to help us in putting a focus on this issue of waste, fraud, and abuse that we have the President having set the tone for us. He said in his State of the Union address a couple of weeks ago, the principle here is clear: taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely or not at all.

I think that that is absolutely the attitude that all of us must have at all levels of government, but particularly at the Federal Government level. We all have to remember that we are in the business of spending other people's money, and we have to be as careful with that as we are with spending our own money, even more so. We have to really work at making sure that the dollars are spent wisely; and, again, as my esteemed colleague said, we do not want waste, we do not want fraud, we do not want abuse because where Federal dollars are being spent on programs, we want them to go for much-needed services.

I want to, Mr. Speaker, yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jindal), my esteemed colleague who is here to add his perspective on this issue.

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much.

I think that comments from the other two speakers are a perfect segue into our presenting some information on how individual citizens can report fraud and abuse to us. Both the Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Government Reform, on which I serve, have worked hard to try to identify fraud and abuse and inefficiencies, and I want to put up this information to show people that if you know of a situation where you know there is waste or abuse or fraud, that you will get in touch.

You can get in touch, of course, with your own personal Representative or Senator, but you can also get in touch directly to the Committee on the Budget, wasteful spending, and there is an address here. The phone number may be a little bit hard to remember. It is (202) 226-9844. If you wanted to get in touch with me, and guarantee that something would be done or someone would follow up on it, my number is (202) 225-2071. This is an issue about which I feel very, very strongly and always follow up on.

I have a letter here that I received recently that I have passed along to the people in the State of North Carolina because of the concern, and this is the kind of thing that we have to stop because all of us are paying for this.

The letter says, I am a citizen of Greensboro, North Carolina, and something has come to my attention I just have to make you all aware of. I have been watching a case of Medicaid fraud for over a year now, and it has only gotten worse. I have called all kinds of fraud lines in North Carolina, and no one seems to care or know who to direct me to. So I have come to you.

What I did was I passed this along to the appropriate people in North Carolina. I do not have answers on it yet, but this is an example of really egregious fraud, and I am sure there are lots of other examples, and my hope is that people watching us today will talk with their friends and let us know if there are other situations like these.

There is this woman that is a certified nursing assistant that is supposed to be going into this home to give care to a 70-year-old woman. The CNA comes in for only 10 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes at the most, and goes to the ABC store for this woman and leaves.

Sometimes she just goes inside and comes right back out.

The woman works for an agency that knows she is doing this, because at one time there was a complaint by a family member. The problem is that the State of North Carolina is paying her for services rendered in the amount of 4 hours daily at $9 an hour. This has been going on for over a year and it has gotten even worse because, as of last year, the husband now is on Medicaid and he is now receiving these same services. Now the hours have doubled but the care has not changed.

"The CNA is not caring for the husband and wife, only going to the ABC store. Sometimes she takes him to the grocery store. They only call the CNA when they want to go to the ABC store. I think this is an expensive way for the taxpayers to have to pay for taxi services, because that is all she does. She comes out of the house, laughing, after being inside only 10 minutes. She is laughing all the way to the bank at our expense.

"Please look into this situation very carefully because there's a possibility that this CNA may have added another Medicaid person to her pay. The agency that she works for is very much aware of this but they have done nothing about it. She has brought in three cases, and one of them has dropped because of the attention it was bringing.

"This needs to be stopped and very soon. We've paid these people enough money for nothing. The couple that is receiving these services are in their right mind and know this is fraud because I have told them this and they continue to sign time sheets, false records."

And then she goes on to give the names of the people receiving the services, and she also says that she has been threatened for doing this. She has also given the information to newspapers in Greensboro and Winston-Salem, but they have done nothing about it. "It is so crazy for dollars to be wasted and every year taxes go up."

So I want that individual to know that I have passed this along to the proper agencies in North Carolina and I am expecting them to look into the case and make sure that we stop this waste of money.

Now, I want to go back to talking a little bit about what our committees are doing here in the Congress to deal with this. I commend the efforts of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), chairman of the Committee on the Budget, and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, for the commitment they have made to eliminating waste and reducing the budget.

The gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), as chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, spearheaded the effort to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse during the last Congress and made great strides in identifying and eliminating such spending. He pledged to find and eliminate one penny out of every dollar.

Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it soon adds up. His commitment to deficit reduction should be applauded, and this is one of the mechanisms that the Committee on the Budget came up with, is to establish this abuse line and abuse office so that people could report it and have something done with it.

The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Tom Davis), as chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, also reminds us that the answer to the deficit problem is not to merely cut off fingers and toes, but what the Federal Government has to do is trim the fat. We have to, just like our constituents have done, tighten our belts and control the amount of spending so that we can reduce and ultimately eliminate the deficit. We must eradicate duplicative programs and hold government agencies accountable for their spending practices.

This is something I am very proud that Republicans are emphasizing more and more, and that is to hold the programs accountable. As I said earlier, the President has said that if we are going to spend a dollar, it has to be spent well.

I want to talk a little more about some of the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans and their attitudes toward holding down spending, but I would like to recognize my colleague, another one of my colleagues from the State of Texas, for him to make some comments about this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield the floor to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

As I said earlier, one of the nice things about having these events is that we get different perspectives from different legislators and from different parts of the country.

I think that Republicans feel very, very strongly about what the President has said, that we must spend taxpayers' dollars wisely or not at all. I have asked the pages to put these charts up here again, and we will do it right at the end of this hour once more, so that we can make sure people know that there is a place they can write, there is a place they can call to report abuse, fraud and inefficiency, and that we will look into those.

I think Republicans are very much committed to this principle. But, unfortunately, we are having to overcome an attitude that has been in existence for a long time in this country relative to the spending of Federal dollars. The other day in a meeting of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I was struck by a comment that one of my Democratic colleagues made. As a freshman, I had decided I was not going to make very many comments. But this comment just struck such a nerve with me that I had to speak up. He said that we were not spending enough money on counseling for people who were out of work in New York City and that he wanted us to spend $750 million more on a program. He called that a paltry sum of money.

Paltry means a very, very small amount. Insignificant. As I said, I had not intended to say anything, but that struck such a nerve with me, because I know that the American people think that $750 million is not a paltry sum of money. As one of our predecessors in the Senate said some time ago, "A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

So we have to adopt the attitude that even a dollar is real money. And when we have people who speak in a committee and say that $750 million is a paltry sum of money, their way of thinking is quite different from mine and I think from the majority of the Republicans in this House, and I am glad to report that.

I know that we have some other Members that are going to speak on this issue, and I want to recognize another colleague, who has a very famous name, the gentleman from the great State of Kentucky (Mr. Davis), to offer his comments at this time.

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Ms. FOXX. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I have to say after listening to the gentleman there in that strong condemnation of the current state of the American Government, the Republican Party has been in control of the Presidency, the executive branch and both Houses of Congress for more than 4 years, and yet the gentleman and others have talked in a very condemnatory tone. Are you not being a little hard on yourselves? If, in fact, things are still so bad, what has the Republican Party been doing for the 4 years in which it has been in complete control of the government, not to mention seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices appointed by Republican Presidents?

Ms. FOXX. Let me respond to the gentleman from Massachusetts. The Republicans have worked very hard always at reducing waste, fraud, and abuse at all levels of government. I will give you an example of something that I did. I have only been here for about 6 weeks, but I can tell you that I am already working on looking for ways to reduce spending in the Federal Government, and I can assure you that all Members of the freshmen class are doing that. As people point out to us over and over and over again, one of the great things about having new people come into government is that you bring in new ideas and fresh ideas and that you work at trying to get these accomplished.

I think that our colleagues who came before us and especially as they have been in charge have shown ways to cut spending and they have done that. We have reduced the Federal deficit last year. We have not cut spending because there has been so much demand for spending. We have a war to fight. The money that is being spent on the war is appropriately being spent, but we are having to overcome 40 years of profligate spending, and we are working very hard to reduce again the waste and inefficiencies in government.

I can assure you that there will be no let-up. As I said, I think that the President has set the tone for this and I think that you are going to see, particularly in this session of Congress, us working hard at making sure that we live up to what the President has said, that we are not going to spend a dime or a dollar of the taxpayers' money unless we can spend it wisely.

Let me give you an example of something that I was able to accomplish and how I challenged my colleagues in the State of North Carolina on my last speech that I made in the North Carolina Senate. I had been contacted by a family and this is a Democratically controlled State, by the way, both at the gubernatorial level and at the legislative level. This family contacted me and said this lady's husband who had retired from the Department of Transportation had passed away. The month he passed away, they got his check. They notified the retirement system. They said, go ahead and cash the check and we will make sure that we show her as the beneficiary. She did not get a check the next month. She did not get a check the next month. She did not get a check the next month. She inquired as to why. Well, she needed to fill out a form. She filled out a form and sent it in, did not get her check, contacted the people, they said, well, you filled out the form wrong, you have to fill it out another way.

They called me on a Sunday afternoon. On a Monday morning, I contacted the retirement system and I said, I want to know why this lady has gone for 4 months and not been able to get her check. They said, we will look into it, and we will get back in touch with you. So by Friday, they got back in touch with me and they said, she will be getting her check at the end of this month. I said, you know, that is not good enough. It is not good enough that you are solving this one problem for this person. What I want to know is, why is the system broken? Tell me what is wrong with your system that would allow this to happen. They promised they would look into it.

About 3 weeks later, I had a visit from the head of the retirement system. Actually, he wrote me a letter and then came by to see me and he said, I am so glad that you brought this to my attention. I did not know this, but we have a system whereby three different people had to approve this lady filling out a new form. This is a system already set. She is due the money. She is not asking for something she is not due. She is the inheritor of her husband's retirement. So she is due the money. But in that system there, in the State government, controlled by the Democrats, they had three different people who had to approve something that did not need to be approved at all. By my bringing this to his attention, he changed the system to show that it would not have to be done that way.

I challenged my colleagues in the North Carolina Senate, anytime that someone came to them and complained, to follow the complaint to its source and to make sure that if there was a systemic problem that they changed the system. And I said to them, if all 50 of you once a year could go to the source of the problem and change the system, we pretty soon would be cutting out lots of useless positions, because we cut out, in effect, two positions or the handling by two people of that paperwork.

So what we have to be doing is going into every single system and making sure that we go to the heart of the matter and we solve the problems at the heart of the matter. That, I think, is the way we are going to do that. And I think that you are going to see a renewed effort in this session of the Congress to go to the heart of the matter and make sure that we are solving the waste, fraud, and abuse. We are encouraging citizens to get in touch with us, let us know where there is waste, where there is fraud, where there is abuse, and we ourselves, and I would challenge you and every other Member of the Congress to do the same thing. If you have a constituent who has run into a problem with the Federal Government because they did not get something taken care of at the right time, let us look at that and see where there is waste in systems.

But if you have somebody who tells you that there is waste and fraud, let us go to the heart of that matter and prosecute those people for doing things that are wrong, whether it is on the part of a citizen or whether it is on the part of a Federal official. I think that that is something we all have to do. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and I think a part of that is to do everything that we can to promote the principles that we were elected to promote and that is a part of our responsibility.

Mr. DAVIS of Kentucky. If the gentlewoman will yield further, in response to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, the distinguished gentleman has a long and illustrious career of leadership advancing the values of his party. He is widely respected nationally and certainly in his home State. We have seen ample evidence of that expansion of government service to serve his constituents. I respect the gentleman's contributions to this body and its history.

Yet at the same time, I think that it is important that we set aside partisan rancor. This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. This is an American problem. It is important that bureaucratic agendas be put aside, that party agendas, partisanship and rancor simply moving for control over debate and taking away that time for necessary dialogue be brought into the context of what the American people sent us here to do.

I believe that it is important in the remainder of the time that we have before the gentleman speaks that we look at the problems that are being faced today. As you so effectively pointed out in those examples, our citizens on the street have seen over and over again examples of waste, examples of fraud, examples of abuse.

Much of the waste, the majority of that waste, is not ill-intended. We have thousands and thousands of very dedicated civil servants. I have met very few in my entire career of public service, whether in the military or in government, who were not dedicated and committed and worked very hard. Rather, the issue that I was addressing, which the gentleman missed, was the issue of process, processes that have grown up, processes that are not connected, processes that do not communicate effectively. These are not partisan issues. These are simple issues of accelerating the ability to make decisions more effectively and to reduce costs.

I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado for yielding to me.

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate his pointing that out again. That obviously was something that I was trying very hard to point out, was the fact that we are trying to improve the systems, improve the processes. And I want to thank the gentleman from Kentucky for pointing out the fact that most of the employees of the Federal Government, indeed the States and local governments, are very dedicated people who want very much to do their jobs well, and that sometimes what we need to do is lead them in the direction of doing things better than we have been doing them. I know very often we lapse into a way of doing something that may not be the best way of doing it and it just continues that way because nobody has suggested doing it differently.

I think one of the great things that we could do in this Congress and in future Congresses is to go to our employees and ask them to make suggestions on ways that we could save money in the Federal Government and make it operate more efficiently, and I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for reminding me that that is something that we obviously ought to be talking about.

We not only want the citizens of this country to help us figure out ways to make the government operate more efficiently and effectively, but there is nobody better qualified to do that than the great employees that we have, because they are there on the front line every day and they understand what needs to be done and how we could do things differently. So I think that if we do have employees who could make suggestions on how we could do this better that we should do it.

I want to point out again that we have places that people can write and call to let us know how they think that we can do things better, especially in the area of waste, fraud, and abuse, and I hope that they will take note of these places and be in touch with us.

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