Emergency Conservation Program Improvement Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, the Senate will soon confirm Colin McDonald to be the Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement.

Now, this is an entirely new position, a new division inside the Department of Justice. It reflects President Trump's forceful actions to root out waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption.

I met with Mr. McDonald in my office a few weeks ago, and he is the right person to lead this effort. His track record as a prosecutor in California, as well as Hawaii, as well as the Department of Justice, is exceptional.

He has successfully taken down drug traffickers, human smugglers, and corrupt officials. He has proven to be especially experienced in investigating and prosecuting fraud.

Mr. McDonald is a noble public servant, and I strongly support his nomination. He is going to be a dedicated fighter of fraud. America needs a fighter of fraud on the job immediately.

And let me remind you why we are here doing this in the first place. It is because in cities and States across the country, criminals are stealing staggering sums of money from hard-working American taxpayers.

The American people are being robbed, and they know it. They see waste. They see fraud. They see abuse. They see corruption. And people are sick and tired of it.

Americans are fed up with welfare criminals and the elected officials who tolerate them. Democrats in the big cities and liberal States look the other way, and the criminals know it.

Remember the fraudulent daycare center in Minnesota? No children were actually enrolled. It was a front. It was set up to syphon money from the Federal Treasury. State officials in Minnesota looked the other way, and criminals became more and more emboldened.

Democrats are complicit in turning the U.S. Treasury into an automated teller machine. The Treasury has become an ATM for crooks, for criminals, and for corruption.

The fraud epidemic in Minnesota happened when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were in the White House. The current Governor Tim Walz is still in office today. And recall he was Kamala Harris' Vice Presidential nominee in the 2024 Presidential election. Fraud spread like wildfire on their watch.

In one particular outrageous scheme, criminals falsified diagnoses of autism. They bribed parents with thousands of dollars of government money to use their children's names on falsified documents. The records show that many parents actively negotiated to be paid even higher rates for the bribes. The parents who were in on the scams even threatened to move their children to competing fraudulent providers unless they received even more money--and these were children without autism; they didn't need treatment.

Let me show you how bad this was. In 2018, the Minnesota Medicaid Program, which was designed to help children with autism, spent a grand total of $6 million. That was in the year 2018. Five years later, due to massive criminal fraud and as elected officials looked the other way, the pricetag ballooned from $6 million to $193 million. Evidence of fraud doesn't get much clearer than that.

Of course, Minnesota isn't the only liberal State with substantial fraud. There is also widespread fraud in California's Medicaid Programs. CBS News just last week reported that over a third of hospice providers in Los Angeles ``trigger multiple red flags for fraud.'' These are people who are supposed to be taking care of people in their final days of life--people with cancer and debilitating diseases. There are multiple red flags for fraud, and California officials look the other way.

A vote for Mr. McDonald is a vote to attack this fraud epidemic head- on. It is a vote to prosecute criminals, and it is a vote to protect hard-working American taxpayers.

I want to congratulate Mr. McDonald on his nomination. We need him on the job immediately, and I look forward to voting for his confirmation. Department of Homeland Security

Mr. President, on a separate matter, for 5 weeks now, TSA agents have not gotten paid. Most continue to show up for work anyway. These TSA agents are struggling. They need to provide for their families. But as a result of the Democrats' shutdown, some TSA agents are calling in sick or are seeking new employment.

On Sunday, 2 days ago, nearly 3,500 TSA agents were absent from work. More than 400 have quit. They have done that since the shutdown of February 13. It is worse when you look city by city. In Atlanta, GA, 42 percent of the TSA agents didn't show up for work on Sunday. In Houston, 40 percent were absent. In New York City and Philadelphia, one in four TSA agents was absent. This is the reason we see the very long lines at the airports.

Immediately funding the Department of Homeland Security is the only way to end the shutdown. We need to make sure it is funded. The Democrat shutdown is dangerous and disgraceful, but once again, Democrats are proving on this very floor that they care more about illegal immigrant criminals than they do the safety and security of the American people.

Nomination of Colin McDonald

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