Ron Wyden

The underlying question is resolving the issue of status.

Puerto Rico must either exercise full self-government as a sovereign nation or achieve equality among the States of the Union.

The lack of resolution of Puerto Rico's status not only distracts from addressing these huge challenges, it contributes to them.

I will be following up. And I want to apologize to both my colleagues for having to leave.

It is time to get this done. Sixty-two months to wait for something like this is, by any standards, just absurd.

The Frank Moore Wild Steelhead Sanctuary designation is a tribute to one of America's great heroes and to a very special place in Oregon.

Senator Wyden reintroduced S. 818, which would: (1) establish that real property located within the boundaries of the Tribe's original 1857 Executive Order reservation shall be treated as on reservation land by the BIA.

The time for addressing it is long past due.

The government paid more in improper Medicaid payments last year than it spends in a year for the ENTIRE Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

That's right, about one out of every ten dollars paid out of Medicare was paid in error. That is unacceptable.

I really feel there is a double standard with respect to enforcement in America.

Senator Coats and I have had one approach, a 31-line 1040 form.

The tax code is an insanely complicated, byzantine mess.

We have been working on improper payments, Tom Coburn and I, for, gosh, almost a dozen years.

I really want to defer to the expertise of Senator Carper, who has led this committee on this question of rooting out health care fraud for years.

What Senator Coats and I have sought to do all these years... is to try to clean out a lot of that junk.

Setting standards for paid tax preparers has multiple benefits. Not only will it crack down on fraud, it is going to help cut down on improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments.

Let me begin by saying that nobody on this side of the aisle is ever going to back down from the challenge of fixing improper payments and fighting fraud.

I also feel that your recommendation there at page 43, with respect to tax enforcement, is important.

If you are a working family in Indiana or in Oregon, you have your taxes taken directly out of your paycheck.

It is the Government Accountability Office and the Taxpayer Advocate, which are trusted and nonpartisan voices on these issues.

The Congress has to do everything it possibly can to eliminate both fraud and improper payments.

I largely cited it in my opening statement because of the good work that you all did back in 2014.

We look at the challenge of improper payments as an opportunity to make our tax system and spending programs work better.

We need to beef up tax enforcement, and particularly, given your testimony, we need to beef it up so that it targets those kinds of instances.