At Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) decried waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.

Video Transcript:
(00:00) okay Youk I now recognize the gentleman from Texas Mr Cloud thank you madam chair for far too long DC politicians have gotten away with measuring their personal value and worth by how much of other people’s money they give away and for far too long they self-righteously have opined that the spending was for altruistic purposes given out of care and compassion for far too long they’ve been more concerned with looking like they cared than having enough care and concern to actually do the due diligence to ensure that the tax dollars were
(00:35) being used wisely and effectively and for far too long those of us who’ve worked to uncover waste Fraud and Abuse have had to deal with what amounts to an unconstitutional fourth branch of permanent bureaucracy that has too often worked to ignore aisc delay and frustrate our efforts to bring transparency and oversight over the last few weeks the Doge effort has begun to uncover not only how massive the waste Fraud and Abuse is but also the extent at which DC politicians and too many obstinate bureaucrats have coordinated to create
(01:08) what is essentially the largest money laundering scheme in history and while Americans have been working to make ends meet they have been using taxpayer dollars to fund unnecessary egregious and even evil things here at home and around the world thankfully in Doge we have a president bringing the leadership needed and a focused effort along with the talent technology tools and transparency to this waste Fraud and Abuse and to those who would stand opposed to this effort I would just point out while it’s understandable to
(01:44) find waste Fraud and Abuse that has grown and mesed htid in this government even over decades certainly uh accelerated over the last few years to continue to protect it is corruption I want to thank the chair for beginning this war on waste on this side of Pennsylvania Avenue and bringing together this committee this effort is so important as we work to relieve the Americans people of this burden of waste Fraud and Abuse Mr toov you mentioned in your written statement uh and talked about it in your your statement at the
(02:18) beginning that this waste Fraud and Abuse is a national security threat and certainly one of the challenges facing us that is a national security security threat is our fiscal situation and so we have got to find ways to find savings to the American people in order to strengthen the bring confidence to the bond markets to to put our country on a fiscal footing uh and and to reverse the curse so to speak uh that we are placing on our our children and our grandchildren you mentioned a couple threats though you mentioned internal
(02:46) threats uh you said that these cases involve government employees individuals entrusted with administering benefits who instead of using their positions to approve fraudulent claims override security controls or even sell sensitive claim claiming information for profit now this is not every federal employee for sure but within the context of people who are trying to give their best effort we have an internal threat but you also mentioned transnational fraud Rings terrorist organizations Nations nation states North Korea nuclear
(03:18) weapons programs funded by our tax dollars China Nigeria Iran Romania Russia not our friends necessarily that are being funded by taxpayer dollars could you give us some examples of how this is happening God yeah so um when you think about what happened during the pandemic $1 trillion doll was stolen 70% of that money went overseas and I can give you some examples in a western state they had more people applying for unemployment insurance benefits and they had individuals over 18 the people that were stealing the money from Romania
(03:54) were using it to facilitate other fraud schemes that include fentol that include doing things to impact our democracy on the inside of threat right the first thing you have to say and my dad was a public servant is 99% of people that work in the public sector are honest hardworking individuals but there are some and what you need is data and Technology to root that out there were examples during the pandemic there were some examples even of last week where people got into the Medicaid system in a Southern in a western state and stole 50
(04:30) million in less than four months so you have to have these controls in place right these aren’t individual stealing Mr Cloud these are organized criminal groups both domestic and transnational that as you mentioned taxpayers are being forced to fund the demise of our own country uh Mr Winston I wanted to ask you because uh there’s a lot of talk about reconciliation right now you mentioned Medicaid and what could be done to to bring pretty subst amount of savings and this is without affecting those who truly need Medicaid and and
(05:05) for what the the purpose of the program was extended for now the the gentleman’s time has expired did hope