Tom Harkin: “Much of the problem is they have no funds for travel. It is interesting that their auditors and their investigators can…”

“Much of the problem is they have no funds for travel. It is interesting that their auditors and their investigators can come to work and sit at a desk, but they cannot do anything. Much of the investigative work of the inspector general is involved in traveling and in investigative activities. So we have hundreds of these people sitting at their desks unable to do their jobs. Every day that the Government is either shut down or every day that they operate under the continuing resolution, with the short funding that they have, the crooks and the con artists are picking Medicare's and the American taxpayers' pockets costing us billions, as the inspector general said, if we fail to act. So this is not just again some little item. It is very odd to me, we can pass a continuing resolution to provide a full year of funding to a number of important programs, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts--that is fine--and yet we do not fully fund the inspector general's office that goes out after the crooks and the con artists and stops them and recovers money for the taxpayers. We cannot fund that. I just wish somebody could justify that to me. I do not understand it.”