Ron Johnson

OK. So what is the sample size on the CERT?

No, there is a plethora of data out there. You have the Internet now. This is easy to do, to actually figure out what is a fair price to pay for any product nowadays. It has never been easier. It is incredibly simple.

It is totally outdated now.

So why is that not caught in the original 17, or 14 to 30 days?

I appreciate the numbers that you were throwing out, $27.5 billion saved estimated over the next 10 years, but that is $2.7 billion divided by more than $700 billion. That is 0.35 percent. It is better than nothing, but it is not much…

I guess maybe the first lesson learned here is Congress is not particularly good or efficient at price fixing.

Senator Johnson mentioned. In this scheme, a supplier number is established for a DME supplier that does not exist.

When they initially estimated how much Medicare would cost the American taxpayer, they projected about 25 years and they said that Medicare would cost $12 billion in the year 1990. In fact, it ended up costing $110 billion, nine times the…

I agree with you that fraud and abuse of the system is costly to taxpayers and I am looking forward to working with you on an ongoing basis to continue to hold hearings like this to try and get some control over these systems, over some of…

Taxpayers would like it, though.

I am not interested in the way Congress figures it. What does your profit and loss look like?

Would you say that one of the reasons is because of the discipline of a private-sector marketplace?

So, in other words, the Federal Government pumps money in, you count that as revenue, and then you still lose $500 million.

OK, ``multiple billions.'' Are you talking $10 billion? Are you talking $15 billion?

So wouldn't that be the policy prescription, the first policy prescription is make sure that, rather than have the taxpayers subsidize that, we come up with a model where the people utilizing the track are actually paying for it?

But the freight rail system is pretty profitable, correct?

Wow. So you can't tell me how much you lose in a year?

So, total, what does Amtrak lose a year, then, in total?

I am not satisfied with the progress, and I certainly have more questions that have not been answered.

One of the reasons we had budget surpluses in the late 1990s is government spending was only a little over 18 percent.

Between 1998 and 2010, the opportunities for public comment have really declined.

To me, that certainly qualifies under the law of diminishing returns as something we really need to take a look at.

Just a quick suggestion. We held a pretty interesting hearing chaired by Senator Mark Warner about the British one-in/one-out rule.

One of the macro pieces of information that was pretty eye-popping to me when I came here was a study commissioned by the Small Business Administration (SBA)...

I appreciate your willingness to step forward and serve. It is a sacrifice, particularly with a young family.