Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to applaud, really, to share with our colleagues an important step by Congress to curb waste and, I think, fraud within the Federal Government. Later today our colleagues over in the House, where both the Acting President pro tempore and I once served, are expected to approve a piece of legislation--not a sexy title, but it is called Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act--and then they are going to send that bill to the President for his signature. Every year, for about the last 6 or 7 years, Federal agencies have been required by law--important payments law signed by George W. Bush-- to review their payments and to figure out which ones were appropriate and which ones were inappropriate. Initially, back in the middle of the last decade not very many agencies complied with the new law. But thanks to the perseverance of OMB and the commitment of a number of agency and department heads, over time more and more Federal agencies have begun reporting improper payments, mostly overpayments. As we gather here today, there is still a number of very large agencies that do not comply with the law. The Department of Defense is a huge expender of taxpayer money. The Department of Defense does not comply with the law. The Department of Homeland Security complies in part with the law. If you look at Medicare, for Medicare Parts A and B, I believe they actually do a fairly decent job of complying with the law but for Parts C and D they do not.…”