During debate on the House floor prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) spoke in opposition to HR 1156, the Pandemic Unemployment Fraud Enforcement Act.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Texas is recognized for four minutes
00:03Thank You mr. Speaker well today
00:05Republicans offer a truly remarkable answer to unemployment insurance fraud and that's to make a big cut in
00:13Those who are already fighting
00:15uninsurance
00:16unemployment insurance fraud and abuse
00:18Likely gone will be the resources for providing the state's access to databases
00:24That they use to prevent fraud from by confirming identities
00:29Once again
00:30Arithmetic is just simply not a Republican friend
00:34They cut five million dollars from any fraud efforts that are going on today to produce a savings of
00:43$500,000 over a ten-year period
00:46according to the Independent
00:48nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office
00:50Which estimates also that quote any additional recoveries from their sorry bill of overpaid benefits would be?
00:59insignificant and this rash Republican move comes on top of
01:04Elon Musk's slash-and-burn rampage through our government
01:08who knows how many civil servants have already been fired whose principal responsibility is to fight fraud and
01:15not only what the fraud this occurred in the past, but some shyster who's come up with a new approach as
01:22The sponsor of any fraud legislation myself
01:26Legislation which mr. Smith has refused to consider
01:29to prevent some bilking of milk Medicaid
01:32I can tell the difference between a real anti-fraud measure and one advance on behalf of
01:38Administration extremists who don't believe in unemployment insurance in the first place
01:43This bill's true objective is to penalize working Americans who through no fault of their own
01:49Both lost their jobs during the pandemic and then received mistaken amounts of overpayment
01:56thereafter now years later instead of accepting responsibility for the failure of the first Trump administration to
02:04Improperly in improperly making those overpayments done first by the Trump administration itself and in failing to establish
02:13safeguards so that there would not be
02:15Overpayments Republicans instead are shifting the blame from Trump's wrong to workers
02:22To wrongs that the workers did not commit in the first place
02:26This bill is just another part of the Trump-Musk fake war on waste fraud and abuse
02:32Big claims big big claims no proof of genuine savings
02:37Really all about wrecking programs like unemployment insurance that the extremist project
02:432025 said were they wanted to eliminate even though they don't actually help taxpayers
02:49One thing we can be sure of is that with Trump we have no accountability
02:54No transparency and no watchdogs
02:57That's why he moved quickly to fire at least 17 inspectors generals in different agencies
03:05Including the Department of Labor Inspector General Larry Turner at the very time. He was fired. Mr. Turner
03:12Received no cause for being fired, of course
03:15Because the real cause was they didn't want to watchdog there. He was about fighting fraud
03:20He was prosecuting large sophisticated criminal rings responsible for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in other ways
03:28Make no mistake if they had really wanted to target those who are taking this money
03:35Unfairly and and in a criminal way they would have taken mr. Davis amendment to prioritize those
03:41Who are doing the most damage?
03:43I believe that Trump Musk and their House Republican enablers here today are much more interested in brash
03:50declarations than in genuine savings
03:53They have made clear that their number one priority in our committee is not unemployment fraud
03:58but more tax breaks for plutocrats by shifting more of the tax burden to working families and
04:05irresponsibly increasing by trillions of dollars the size of our national debt I
04:09Would urge a rejection of this bill and I yield back the balance of my time gentlemen