Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am going to address, as I do often on the floor, problems with the False Claims Act. As author of the False Claims Act of 1986, I want to say upfront, before I talk about some problems, that this is a piece of legislation that has brought into the Federal Treasury $56 to $57 billion of fraudulently taken money. Each year, the Department of Justice updates the amount of money that has come in under the False Claims Act, about $3 billion to $4 billion a year. We are talking about a piece of legislation I passed more than 30 years ago, that had been good for the taxpayers, to make sure their money is handled the way the law requires. Obviously, if it is taken fraudulently, it isn't handled the way the taxpayers would expect. With that introduction, I want to bring up some problems with the False Claims Act. Today, there are some troubling developments in the courts' interpretation of the False Claims Act. To understand these developments, I want to review a little history. In 1943, Congress gutted the Lincoln-era law known as the False Claims Act. At that time, during World War II, the Department of Justice said it needed no help from whistleblowers to fight fraud. The Department of Justice said, if the government already knows about the fraud, then no court should even hear a whistleblower's case. In 1943, Congress amended the False Claims Act to bar any whistleblower from bringing a claim if the government knows about the fraud.…”