The third part of it is we want you to go out and use private recovery contractors to go out and recover as much of the money that has been improperly paid, overpaid, as you can.

The cost of the census is measured in billions and billions of dollars, and it is going up.

the leadership involvement and emphasis is so critical.

Nobody is as smart as everybody.

The plan totaled some $787 billion over a couple of years, much of it in the form of tax cuts for working Americans.

I was troubled by, Dr. Coburn, who sat here where Senator McCain sat for many years.

Over the last couple of years, everybody knows we have faced a set of economic challenges that are almost unparalleled since going back to the Great Depression.

Let me say this: About roughly half--of the ideas of what we need to do to stop making these improper payments, about half of them, maybe half of them, have been acted on, but the rest have not.

if we keep on doing things the way we have always done them, we will keep on getting the same result.

I want to make sure that the way we do the census then will be a good deal different than the way we have done it this year and 10 years ago and 20 years ago and so forth.

And when the President and this Congress put together this plan, we wanted to make sure that not one dime was wasted.

So I would still get more money than Senator McCain.

I can remember a day not that long ago when someone would accuse you of being transparent, it was not a compliment.

First, make sure all Federal agencies, including Medicare, all parts of Medicare, Medicaid, are reporting improper payments.

I have heard estimates for improper payments for Medicare and Medicaid combined on an annual basis, estimates that go up as high as $60 billion a year, maybe even more.

Insanity is described as doing the same thing over and over and over again expecting a different result and not getting it.

Well, good. It sounds like this is a problem that could take years to finish out, so it looks like we will have you around for a little while.

Part of what we tried to do in the improper payments legislation that Senator McCain and I, Senator Collins and others, Senator Coburn, Senator McCaskill, had worked on is we said basically there are three things we wanted to be done with…

we need to really be thinking outside the box.

The other piece of the Recovery Act (RA) was direct Federal spending for projects to help rebuild our physical and economic infrastructure while at the same time preserving jobs.

When you say uncovering latent networks, I think I know what that means, but maybe not everybody does.

We had really troubling reports this year of the enumerators, the people actually going out and doing the counting, being harassed just trying to do their job.

As I understand it, during this last year we stood down the recovery audit contracting activities in these five States and did a lessons learned.

But from my standpoint, my guiding principle is to make sure that HHS is as aggressive on the spectrum as they can be without crossing into lines of inequity or administrative problem.

The task that was set out for you was not an easy one.