Chris Chocola: “well, the gentleman brings up a great point. The gentleman asked the question earlier, what kind of country do we want…”

“well, the gentleman brings up a great point. The gentleman asked the question earlier, what kind of country do we want, what kind of America do we want? I think we also have to ask the question, what kind of government do we want? When we talk about raising taxes, talk about raising revenue, which we have already learned that good pro-growth tax policy at lower rates actually increases Federal revenue, but you ask why would we raise taxes and what do we need to spend money on. I think it is important to recognize that we can actually have better government at a lower cost. Every business in America and every family in America has to find a way to do more with less, find a way to be more efficient. For some reason, we do not think government can achieve the same standards. For some reason, we think the government does not have waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me just share a couple of things with you. Recently, the Inspector General found that Social Security sent $31 million worth of Social Security checks to dead people. That is money that did not go to help anyone. They found in 2003 that the food stamp program spent $1.1 billion in overpayments. That is with a B. In 2001, the GAO reported and said about Medicare, there are no reliable estimates to the extent of improper payments throughout the Medicare program because they cannot audit their books, they cannot even tell the kind of financial controls they have.…”