Jack Bergman: “When we talk about debt ceiling limits, as my colleague stated, we have already spent the money. Now it is time to pay…”

“When we talk about debt ceiling limits, as my colleague stated, we have already spent the money. Now it is time to pay our bills. When you think about how that all starts, it starts with responsible spending and allocation of funds on the front end, knowing that there are limits. In my first term in the 115th Congress as a member of the Budget Committee, I still remember very starkly a data point that was given to us as new members of the committee. The subject was improper payments by the Federal Government. Seven years ago, that number was $150 billion a year in improper payments by the Federal Government. When we talk about limiting debt and we talk about clawing back funds that have already been appropriated and are sitting in accounts, we always have to consider the fact that are we as the Federal Government really managing the expenditure of the dollars? Because of the fact that there is no incentive within Federal bureaucracies to attack improper spending, we haven't addressed the entire problem. When you think about an example of what that $150 billion annually would mean in improper payments, an example would be if a person who, God rest their soul, has been deceased, but yet, their Social Security check still comes, or other checks come. You know there is an end game for that. Another example would be that a person is receiving a check for $1,000 that really should be for $100. That is just an error.…”