Recognizing Dave Baker

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize my good friend and First Congressional District of Kentucky resident, Dave Baker, upon his retirement from the University of Kentucky Sports Network after 37 years.

Dave ``Buzz'' Baker began his career at WKYT in Lexington as an intern and was hired full time upon his graduation from Georgetown College in 1982.

Dave and his lovely wife, Donna, reside in Frankfort and attend church with me and my family at Forks of Elkhorn Baptist in Midway, Kentucky.

Dave began working Southeastern Conference events in 1993 and has been a constant presence on the SEC Network and other University of Kentucky televised events ever since calling men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, and volleyball.

Buzz Baker is a Kentucky sports legend who has always been and will continue to be a force in what we in the Bluegrass State call Big Blue Nation. Mission of Oversight and Government Reform Committee

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I rise to give an update on the work that the House Oversight Committee has been doing recently. I want to remind everyone that our mission on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to identify waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the Federal Government.

We have been going State by State and focusing on identifying massive fraud in the Federal welfare programs administered by poorly run States.

We began in Minnesota. We worked with nine whistleblowers. These whistleblowers were career State employees who came forward, and I hope that whistleblowers in other States saw how we treated those whistleblowers. We protected the whistleblowers.

We sat down with the whistleblowers. We interviewed them. We did transcribed interviews and took their testimony to produce a report to build our case to help with the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation in Minnesota on the welfare fraud.

What we concluded after bringing in people who were State employees in Minnesota who had been ringing the bell on fraud there for many years, we concluded that both Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz knew about the massive amounts of fraud in the welfare programs in Minnesota, yet did nothing about it, and in some instances, retaliated against the State employees who did the right thing and came forward.

Now we have moved our investigation into California, and we are focusing on a massive hospice fraud scheme--hospice of all things. This is a program I think every Member of Congress supports. Hospice is who we call in our deepest, darkest times of need.

We have zeroed in on one particular area in California: Los Angeles County. A recent audit revealed over $3.5 billion in hospice fraud primarily in one county: Los Angeles County.

What we found in Los Angeles County is that 18 percent of the total bill for the Federal Government for hospice in America went to one county. You had thousands of people registered as hospice providers billing hospice for hundreds and hundreds of patients that no one can find.

We are going to continue to work with auditors. We hope that whistleblowers will come forward in California like they did in Minnesota, and we are going to try to identify this and hopefully work with authorities in Minnesota who have prosecuted over two dozen people already in Minnesota for fraud.

We are serious on the House Oversight Committee, the Republicans are, about doing something about the massive amounts of fraud we are seeing. We want to get the backs of the American taxpayer. The hardworking taxpayers who work hard every day and send their tax dollars here to Washington are frustrated that we are losing so much money to fraud. We are going to do something about it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source