Ron Johnson

The majority is contemplating taking action, breaking precedent, basically breaking the rules to change the Senate rules in a way that I believe would be incredibly damaging, if not very destructive, to the United States Senate

Going forward, we hope the President and the ruling party will expand the space for political opposition and undertake the reforms necessary to ensure the long-term stability of Burkina Faso.

I appreciate the fact the administration is highlighting that. I think information, sunlight is probably the best cure there.

So when we go about our rebalancing, then are we very specifically trying to counter those buildups?

What area, just in general, of buildup is of greatest concern to the United States? Is it their naval buildup?

So if they are spending $120 billion per year, can you break that out for me in terms of personnel versus procurement, weapons systems, ships?

I look at China really as a 1.2 billion person opportunity for the United States.

It would not be a valid argument, for example, to argue that Congress should ignore allegations that the Internal Revenue Service signaled out tea party groups.

Thank you, Chairman.

What we are looking at right now in terms of the health care law is when it was originally passed, it was going to cost a trillion dollars over 10 years.

But, again, it is not speaking to the benefit of utilizing more of a private sector model, where individuals have more skin in the game or more control over what they are spending, making wise consumer choices, versus the government just…

The current budget window is about $1.7 trillion. And when it really kicks in 2016, it will cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.

As long as we are talking about different types of certification, do you have the statistics on how many suppliers there are?

53 percent that were termed 'improper' or where there was--I am not exactly sure what this represents, but 53 percent by Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) are actually overturned.

First of all, we certainly agree that any level of improper payment is not acceptable, and certainly a two-thirds rate of improper payments is not acceptable.

Then who determines that, in 2011, for example, that 61 percent of the $9.7 billion that was paid by the MACs, who determines that 61 percent of that were improper payments?

Is that 100 percent of CMS claims paid through the MAC?

Now, that should not be a very difficult thing to fix when you take a look at--especially with the Internet now, you can really get a competitive price very quickly.

As Senator Johnson mentioned in his opening statement...

We want an effective and efficient government, and the trick is--I come from the private sector, and we were talking about earlier that in the private sector, you have the fiscal discipline of going bankrupt, of making sure that you not…

I think what we really need to do is work together and work with CMS to get the answer to your question in terms of what percentage really is fraud related?

How do you prevent that going forward? It is a very difficult issue.

Again, that is going to be, I am afraid, another government program that may not be particularly efficient in terms of how the money is spent.

The consumer of the product, by and large, does not care what something costs because they really do not have that much skin in the game.

We want to definitely discipline and go after bad actors versus the quality suppliers throughout the industry.