Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I would like to speak to these amendments for a couple of moments.

The first amendment, No. 991, targets improper payments and fraud in our largest entitlement programs. It is remarkable--every elected official I have ever met at any level of government often rallies against waste and fraud in government, and that means it so unusual that this budget we have before us leaves out critical funding to fight fraud and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and disability programs.

The amendment I am offering today would restore all program integrity funding to the Republican budget to the levels allowed in the Budget Control Act. Program integrity activities have a proven track record of saving money. When we invest in programs that track and eliminate overpayments and fraudulent claims, we end up reducing costs and lowering budget deficits.

For example, according to the Social Security actuaries, program integrity efforts to conduct ``continuing disability reviews''--specifically to weed out beneficiaries who have recovered and are no longer defined as ``disabled''--saves taxpayers $10 for every $1 spent on program integrity efforts.

I am introducing this amendment because this is a good use of taxpayer dollars and a critical way to ensure that the money we invest in important programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disability goes directly to the beneficiaries who rely on them. Any elected official who has ever said that we ought to root out waste and fraud in entitlement programs should obviously be supporting restoring these critical funds.

The second amendment I wish to raise is a bipartisan measure, No. 636, filed along with Senators CRAPO and KING, dealing with consumer data security.

Recently, we have seen major data breaches that have affected hundreds of millions of American consumers, those who have shopped at Target and Home Depot, have accounts at JPMorgan Chase, or have received health care from Anthem. In the aftermath of the Target breach, working with Senator Kirk, we recommended that various industry groups in the private sector cooperate on information sharing to ward off data thieves.

With continuous advances in technology, it is vitally important that we continue to strengthen our efforts to protect consumers from cyber crime by enacting smart, targeted protections. Our bipartisan amendment simply recognizes that we need to provide reasonable notification to consumers when their personal information is compromised and encourage greater cooperation and enhanced data security programs in the private sector to safeguard that data. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan amendment.

Finally, I would like to introduce a third amendment, No. 638, along with my colleague Senator Ayotte, that mirrors language included in the chairman's mark of our last budget resolution. This amendment encourages Congress to act on the recommendations from GAO to improve Federal Government efficiency by reducing fragmentation, overlap, and duplication. The Senate has a bipartisan history of working on these issues, and I think it is important that our budget resolution this year include our continuing commitment to this work.

In 2010, Congress passed the bipartisan Government Performance and Results Modernization Act, or GPRA, which required Federal agencies to report how their money was being spent, as well as top priorities and possible avenues of consolidation within the agency. Last year, we passed the DATA Act, which works in concert with GPRA to further track how agencies are spending money.

It is important that the savings from these actions go toward reducing our deficit. That is why the Warner-Ayotte amendment is actually a deficit-reduction reserve fund.

Again, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan amendment.

I yield to my good friend, the Senator from Kansas.

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