I want to thank Senator Levin for holding this hearing today. He has been a leader for years in Congress on efforts to better understand and monitor commodity markets.

Of a transparent market.

It is our obligation in Congress to make sure regulators act in the public interest, based on facts and data, rather than reflexively placing restrictions on unpopular market participants.

So for clarity for the American people, either there is or there is not excessive speculation, and we have put forward regulations to prevent the potential for that in the future.

Everything seems to be rigged for an upward bias.

The point is the factual basis of determining excessive speculation needs to be based on something that is concrete, not an aftereffect but something that is concrete.

We need to be honest about what these findings mean. They mean that Federal dollars intended to address the health needs of the elderly and the poor are instead being used to feed addictions or to pad the wallets of drug dealers.

I look forward to hearing more about this suggestion from our witnesses today.

I have worked with Senator Tom Coburn, with Senator Brown, and with others on this panel to work on bipartisan legislation that curbs waste and fraud in both Medicaid and in Medicare.

This is an important change, and, again, I want to hear more about that today as well.

This is clearly unacceptable.