Maurice Hinchey: “Absolutely. I served in the State legislature, and I know State legislatures and governors are not embarrassed about…”

“Absolutely. I served in the State legislature, and I know State legislatures and governors are not embarrassed about trying to use Federal funds in creative ways to solve their own budgetary problems. In New York, for example, where the State still does not have a budget in place, it is months overdue, if they had the opportunity to manipulate Federal funds in a way that would allow them to produce a budget easily, without them having to do some difficult things within the context of their own responsibility, I believe they would do it and they would not care about the loss of the Federal program. They would just sort of gloss over that. So there is a lot of irony here, unquestionably. Not only do our friends on the other side of the aisle over here want to cut Medicare by $270 billion so they can pay for a $245 billion tax cut, most of the proceeds of which would go to upper-income people, but, as the gentleman pointed out, they are slashing away, and the bill is still before the House, the one that calls for a $270 billion cut, they are slashing away at the existing provisions which attack fraud and abuse. What they would do in that bill is this: They would raise the standards of proof so it would be more difficult for investigators and law enforcement people to prove fraud in the system. So if there were people out there ripping the system off, under their proposal it would be tougher to catch them.”