Political Quotes

“Mr. President, only this morning I was standing here and the Senator from New Mexico was presiding over the Senate. I got through half of my remarks and had to yield to the Senator from Maryland. Now that no one is on the floor, I wish to take maybe 5 or 10 minutes and finish what I started this morning. I was talking earlier today about how to reduce the amount of overpayments--we call them improper payments--the Federal Government makes. Last year they added up to almost $100 billion, not counting the Department of Defense, not counting part of Medicare, not counting part of the Department of Homeland Security--a lot of money. I also added that Federal agencies are doing, for the most part, a better job of estimating and identifying costly mistakes of improper payments. I think the White House deserves credit. Not only this President but his predecessor George W. Bush deserve credit for, not only in the case of George W. Bush, saying: We ought to have improper payments in the law and we ought to make this a priority, but also for President Obama and his team who are beginning to scour Federal programs for improper payments and also taking strong steps to try to eliminate them in the future. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag noted that agencies employed stricter standards for identifying improper payments, resulting in much of last fall's reported improper payments increase.…”