Neal Fights for Taxpayers, Calls Out Trump’s Pardons for Convicted Fraudsters at Ways and Means Hearing on Medicare Fraud

WATCH HERE “Want to thank our witnesses today for this helpful dialogue. So let me disabuse all in the room today of the following. I’m not aware of anybody here who’s for fraud. I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. Do we need unanimous consent on that or is that just a basic notion that we can all adhere to? “So having said that, I’ve watched during a long career, where frequently the term waste, fraud, and abuse becomes a veneer for cutting spending. So if we disagree with something, we say that it’s fraudulent. Well, we do have a Justice Department, where the President has mistakenly noted, and believed that the Attorney General of the United States is his personal attorney. But we do have US Attorney’s offices for the purposes that you have described here today correctly, and that’s going after fraud. “We’re all for getting rid of fraud, but I’ve not heard one word from our colleagues and friends on the other side about the ability to pardon individuals who are found guilty of Medicare fraud. $205 million in one case, $38 million in another, 50 year prison sentence, pardoned. And the silence is deafening. “So let me suggest that I can speak for the Democratic side here. We’re against fraud. We want the Justice Department to pursue fraud. It subtracts from the benefit in Medicare that is earned over the course of a career, as is the case with Medicaid. “So we had Secretary Kennedy last week. We discussed fraud with him. We want it to be a bipartisan issue, for sure, aggressively and assertively to root out fraud. But the President has handed out these pardons to people who’ve been found guilty of fraud.” ###